


never thought tonight could ever be (this close to me)

by violetlolitapop



Series: The Secret Lives of Catholic School Boys [5]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Underage Drinking, because it's every highschool party trope lbr, but here i am splitting it into three chapters cos i'm an asshole that doesn't know how to shut up, first chapter is the only one that does that... as much as it does, part of a series but can be read as a stand alone, the pov kinda switches back and forth in the beginning, this was supposed to be a shortish one shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetlolitapop/pseuds/violetlolitapop
Summary: “What if you end up running into the love of your life tonight?” Chris asks him. “You should be more excited about it.”“I really doubt that I’m gonna meet the love of my life at a high school party,” Victor mutters.-.-.-In which before the the start of their Junior year, Chris drags Victor off to the same party Yuuri and his friends decide to crash.-.-.-





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't replied to everyone's comments from the last part yet just because work did get busier cos we're getting ready for an easter rush and i wanted to get this out asap, but i've read all of them and i love all of you. really, thank you and i'll be replying to everyone soon. i honestly cannot put into words how much i appreciate all that support from the last update, i love you all, i really do!

“I don’t want to go out tonight.”

Chris ends up clutching at his chest and swoons backwards with as much dramatic flair as possible. It’s usually an amusing thing to see, but Victor can’t seem to want to do more than just roll his eyes and lounge backwards on Chris’ settee.

(Personally, he's really jealous of Chris' room. Who has a settee set up next to where there is a literal bed? Chris, that's who. Who gets to get away with that? Chris, that's who! Victor wants to be fashionable too, dammit.)

“I’m serious,” Victor tells him over the soft sounds of electro-pop seeping from the small speaker on the vanity. Small dose of envy for his friend's room aside, he needs to be clear that he doesn't want to go out. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, for once just have a normal sleep over like my mom thinks we do?”

“We do sleep at some point,” Chris tells him with a large smile, and Victor can’t help but smile as well.

Because, yes, they do sleep at some point. But if they’re _really_ honest about what they get up to, Victor is sure that his mother would skip a punishment and ship him straight off to a far-off monastery. He has no doubt about that, at all.

“I mean, you’re not wrong," he says. "But the last time we had to walk back from Koreatown and we didn’t actually get any sleep.”

“We slept for about two hours," Chris points out.

“That’s a nap.”

“Technicality.”

“I just,” Victor says and actually moves back enough to lounge with his arm draped across his head, “I’ve been feeling really… ugh. You know?”

He really can't describe it. It's this sense of melancholy that's just draped itself over him since the end of the school year after suddenly realizing that most of his fellow classmates have the vague sense of what they'll be doing once graduation happens. Victor, on the other hand, has absolutely no idea. Other than leaving his mother's home, he has no clue. He figures that must have something to do with it, but that still doesn't seem right.

“Not really," Chris says. "But I do know that investing in that seat would be great. Look at you, you look like a faint maiden that needs her smelling salts.”

“Shut up!” Victor ends up laughing and sits up again. “But really, I don’t want to go out. I just wanna stay in and… what do you even do at a sleep over?”

“Watch movies? Talk about girls? I’m not completely sure, most of mine have always ended in awkward hand jobs.”

Victor ends up tossing a throw pillow at his direction. “Don’t let my mom ever hear you say that.”

“I still can’t believe your mom thinks I’m straight,” Chris snorts. “But, I guess, to be fair it’s amazing how many parents think _any_ of the boys at school are straight.”

“You would know, wouldn't you?.”

“I do my best to know all my classmates,” his friend tells him and bats his eyes bashfully.

Victor flings the other throw pillow at him, looking a bit happier and smiling just a tad bit more than before.

 

* * *

 

“Yo, I’m going out tonight so y’all are on your own.”

There's this thing that Yuuri, Phichit, and Leo do where they all take turns at hosting a sort of end-of-the-school year sleep over. They've been doing it since they've first become friends and even as they get older, there doesn't seem to be any sign of stopping. This year, it's hosted at Leo's home, and while his parents are gone for a four day trip down to Mexicali, they've been left under the supervision on Leo's older sister, Gabby.

With her sudden appearance and even more sudden announcement, the three boys sprawled out on the living room floor look up at the older girl and forget all about the terrible movie they’re watching.

(There’s some kind of monster made out of kale waddling about, everything is in black and white, and they were all making fun of it too much to really know what’s going on.)

“Where you goin’?” Leo asks.

Leo’s sister, to all of them, has always been someone that never really treats them like children, she never has and it's what they like best about her. Gabby has always been the kind of person to be honest with them about nearly everything and expect them to handle what she tells them like people that understand what responsibility is.

So, it’s a little odd to them when she says, “None of your business.”

Three sets of ears perk up immediately.

“Mom said you had to watch us this weekend,” says Leo. “Where you goin’?”

“And I said, none-”

“Hey, Gabby, that’s not the right way to go about this conversation,” says Phichit. “I mean, it’s be bad enough if your mom finds out you left us alone for the night, but what if she were to find that secret Instagram of yours?”

“Fuck you, Phichit, that shit’s private!”

“Doesn’t mean she wouldn’t make you give her access,” Yuuri points out.

Gabby, dressed to nines in her floral crop top and large hoop earrings, puts her hands on her hips and gives them all an unimpressed look.

“What does it matter where I’m going?”

“’Cos I’m your brother and I love you and I worry about your safety,” says Leo, and damn does he sounds sincere. The whole room is pretty sure he means it.

Gabby must really feel it to, because her defensive stance drops with a sigh and she looks up at the ceiling as if she’s asking for strength.

“There’s a party that Maribel invited me to. Well, there’s like, three? It’s like a block event or something that one of the Rosary girls planned out.”

The room explodes.

What was supposed to be their annual end-of-the-school year slumber party is completely forgotten. The half-eaten pizza is flung across the room in Phichit’s mad dash to cling to Gabby’s leg while Leo clambers out of his sleeping bag and Yuuri is left on the floor wondering what fresh hell this night is going to turn into.

 

* * *

 

“Whose party is it even?” Victor asks while Chris flicks through his wardrobe, pushing hanger after hanger out of the way, and changes out of one outfit to the next.

“I don’t really know cos it's more like a block party thing,” Chris says. “But, you know the Leroy brothers? The ones that set up that Teen Live thing with the church and do their song covers during mass? One of the party’s theirs so I figured we’d check that one out first.”

"Okay, but why would you want to go to that? Didn't you start some kind of feud between them last year?”

Chris starts flinging things out of the closet like no one’s business, and in that frenzy comes his collection of feather boas. Victor can’t help himself, he picks up the pink, fluffy one and wraps it around his neck.

“It’s not my fault they’re both weak-willed to cute blonds,” says Chris as he comes out in a red button down shirt that has a bit of a sheen to it. “Does red look good on me?”

“Naturally,” Victor tells him. “But can they be _that_ weak-willed when you’re not even _that_ blond.”

“We can’t all be platinum beauties like you, Victor. Rude.”

 

* * *

 

“Take us with you!” Phichit nearly screams and Gabby has to take a step back.

She tries to, anyway. Phichit is really holding on to her though, it’s a little bit amazing to see, really.

“No! I’m not taking you with me!”

She shakes at her leg, but Phichit is still holding on with an iron grip. Yuuri starts to mentally count how many times she tries to get him off and is genuinely impressed when he reaches the double digits.

“Come on!” Phichit keeps begins. “Come oooooooon, Gabby, take us with yooooooou!”

“No! Leo, control your friend!”

“I actually kinda wanna go,” he says, calmly.

“What?! No!”

“It’ll be a big one, right?” Phichit starts to argue. “This is literally every middle schooler’s dream! This is literally the beginning to every teen movie!” He pauses to gasp. “Gabby! What if I meet the love of my life tonight?! You’re really gonna keep me away from destiny.”

“Holy fuck,” she says. “Calm the fuck down. Phichit, life is not like a movie.”

“Just because you haven’t met the boy of your dreams yet, don’t mean it’s a lost cause for me!”

The room goes dead quiet.

They are all staring at Phichit, who seconds later realizes what he’s said.

“Did I really just out myself while dragging Leo’s sister?” he asks, numbly. “Is that something I really just did?”

“Um, yeah,” Yuuri says first. “I think that’s what you just did?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Gabby says, quickly. “I mean, you guys are cool with Leo, so it’s not a big deal!”

The room goes dead quiet, again.

Leo smacks himself in the face with both hands.

“Oh god...” Gabby drawls out. “You’re not out to them? Leo, how am I supposed to know that!? I thought you nerds told each other everything?”

“I mean, we do?” Leo says awkwardly. “But when is it ever gonna come up? ‘By the way, guys, I’m pretty sure I’m bi?’”

“You too?!” Phichit screams and tackles his friend onto the floor and pulls him into a hug. “I’m not alone! Leo, I love you so much!”

Leo ends up laughing along with Phichit, and then just as suddenly they both turn their attentions to Yuuri, still sitting upright on the floor, with a questioning stare that doesn’t need to be said.

Poor Yuuri, he can feel a flush spread across his face and he ends up stuttering, “I-I don’t know? I mean.. I don’t know? I’ve.. never thought about it much? I mean, sometimes I think about it, but I don’t know? I don’t… really feel like.. much?”

"Deep breaths, man," Phichit tells him and crawls on over to sit next to him. "It's okay, no one hear is gonna look at you any different."

"I just..." Yuuri trails off and takes in a deep breath. He can do this. These are his friends. "I've never thought about people like that before. I mean, in terms of that. I just... never really find people that attractive? No, that's not right. Because I know when a person is good-looking, I just... don't care much? Like, I got other things to worry about, y'know?"

"Huh, so is that because of the anxiety?" Leo wonders aloud.

“Nah, kinda sounds like you’re on the ace spectrum,” Gabby says directly to Yuuri. “I don’t know, that’s Maribel’s identity, I can ask her about it, if you want more info.”

“I’m good,” Yuuri tells her, and goes even more red that he's said more than he ever has on the subject before. “Really, I’m fine for now.”

Not even a second later after saying this, he finds himself on the floor as well being hugged by Phichit. Leo joins in soon enough and both are on either side of him, creating a massive friend pile among the remnants of their interrupted slumber party with laughs and smiles.

“We need a really cool squad name now,” Phichit says.

 

* * *

 

“My dad says it’s fine if we get back late. He just doesn’t want us to come back too drunk, but I told him we’re not big drinkers anyway. He wasn’t surprised to hear that, and I gotta be honest, I don’t know how to feel about that…”

While he finishes himself up, Victor tries again, to make it plain and simple to understand, that he is not up for a party tonight.

“Chris. I don’t want to go.”

“You can borrow something from my closet if you want.”

“No, that’s not the problem. I just don’t really feel like it.”

Chris isn’t listening. Not really, anyway. He ends up back in front of his closet and pushes back hanger after hanger to look for something.

“I have this blue button up that I know would look good on you.”

Victor flops backwards on the settee with a groan and pink feathers digging into skin.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take much after that to get Gabby to let them tag along. In her words, it’s the least she could do for outing her brother when he wasn’t ready, even if everything turned out fine in the end and now need a new squad name.

Phichit insists.

“Okay, only one rule in my car,” Gabby says once they’re all buckled in the backseat. “We jam out to Selena. And Selena only. On the weekends anyway. Point is, we jam out. So if y’all know what’s good for you, y’all will be singing.”

“What if we don’t know the words?” Phichit asks.

“Then you walk.”

She turns on the ignition and the radio starts blaring as the car comes to life.

“ _Como la floooooor_ ,” she sings out and sings it loud.

The boys do their best to keep up with her. Leo does much better than the other two, but that’s to be expected since she is his sister. They try though.

The best they can, anyway.

“Hey, Yuuri, you say _t_ _ú_ weird.”

“What?!”

 

* * *

 

Chris ends up sitting Victor in front of his vanity and runs his fingers through his hair. Victor bats at his hands but to no avail, his best friend is still determined to find something about his appearance to fuss over.

“What if you end up running into the love of your life tonight?” Chris asks him. “You should be more excited about it.”

“I really doubt that I’m gonna meet the love of my life at a high school party,” Victor mutters but let’s Chris do whatever he wants when he finally begins to run a brush through his hair anyway.

“Never say never, Victor.”

“I didn’t actually say ‘never’ though.”

Chris tugs his hair. “Smartass. But really though, it’s my life’s motto to always look your best because you never know when you’ll run into the most beautiful man in the world.”

“I thought it was because just in case you die, that’s the outfit you’ll spend the rest of your afterlife in?”

“Well, that too.”

Victor laughs, but he doesn’t say anything else. He lets Chris go back to primping him even if the heavy feeling dragging over him hasn’t left him. It must show, because Chris pokes at his cheek and offers him something like a reassuring smile.

“You gotta keep a positive look at this,” Chris says. “And really you just don’t know. The love of your life _could_ be sprucing himself up right now, making himself look dazzling and perfect and you don’t even know.”

 

* * *

 

The bass in the car is bumping like crazy and the three boys in the back are bouncing in their seats while singing.

“Biddi biddi bom bom!”

“Biddi biddi bom bom!”

“Biddi biddi biddi biddi biddi bom bom!”

They are all so out of key, and out of tempo, and how is that even possible when literally singing along with a track?

Gabby would be more offended if she didn’t find it so damn hilarious.

 

* * *

 

“Only for a little while,” Victor tells him at the door. “Really, Chris, I don’t know what's up with me today, but I'll only stay for as long as I can hang out for. You can stay if you want, I’ll just walk back over here.”

“That’s fine,” says Chris. He gets serious looking then and puts a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Look, I don’t like forcing you out. I don’t. I wouldn’t even normally make you go out when I know you don’t want to… but.. dammit, Victor, I don't want to see you fall into this slump or whatever and maybe getting your out to not wallow in it will help somehow. That’s all.”

It’s well-intended and as much as Victor does feel like doing nothing but curling up in a ball of wrapping himself up in a cocoon and never having to deal with the world again, Chris may be right.

Maybe...

“Okay. But if I really start to not feel it, I’m coming back here.”

“And I won’t stop you. Whatever I’m doing, we’ll leave.”

Victor nods and feels better knowing that. Chris opens the door. They can already hear the music from down the block.

 

* * *

 

“I’m not gonna tell any of you to not drink because I’m not stupid enough to think none of you won’t be curious,” Gabby tells them while putting the car in park. “Don’t get sloppy though. No one’s like a sloppy drunk.”

“Why does this sound like your giving yourself a warning instead of us?” Leo teases and ducks away from her hand swiping back at him.

The two do a small back and forth over who'll be more embarrassing when Phichit notices Yuuri fidgeting more than usual next to him and nudges him.

“You okay?” he asks.

Objectively, all this seemed really fun and like an adventure back in the comforts of Leo’s home and in their pajamas, but now that they’re here…

“I’m freaking out a little,” Yuuri confesses in a hushed whisper that only Phichit hears over the sounds of the bickering siblings.

Phichit grabs his hand and gives it a little squeeze along with a small smile.

“Just stay with us,” he tells him. “And if anything, just remember, there is no one here at this party that you’ll have to worry about seeing ever again.”

It makes him feel a little better, but the smile he gives back is shaky at best. Still, Yuuri unbuckles himself with everyone else and leaves the car with a face that reads braver than he feels.

He can do this though.

He's got this.

And like Phichit said, if something happens, what are the chances he'll see anyone from tonight ever again?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies to that anon on tumblr, i lied to you my dude i didnt get this out that morning it went way longer than i thought. -__-)/

It’s nothing like what the movies show.

Not really, anyway.

There are people, _lots of people_ , that are wandering around the same three houses with their doors wide open. And the music is loud, but there’s no drunken antics happening. If anything, there doesn’t seem to be that much drinking going on to begin with. There’s a lot of dancing, a lot of laughing, a lot of shouting to be heard over the music, but other than that…

“Food and soda are in the kitchen, actual drinks are in the pool area and where the beer pong is set up,” a lanky boy tells them when they walk into the closest house first. “We’re trying to keep things as contained as possible for less of a mess.”

“How long d’you think that’ll last?” Gabby laughs.

“As long as it usually does. Oh, and no one’s allowed upstairs, I will personally disembowel someone if I find them up there.”

“You are your brothers are extra as fuck. Y’know that, right?”

The boys are ushered in past him by Gabby herself and she’s quick to leave them on their own.

“I’m gonna find Maribel and the rest of the girls,” she tells them. “All of ya should be fine, everyone’s always pretty cool at these things, don’t drink too much, we’ll leave sometime after midnight since I gotta help out at church in the morning, Leo, if you’re gonna bug people about the music ask them if they’ll play Techno Cumbia.”

She waves them off with a, “Text me if anything happens!” and is gone.

Yuuri grabs Phichit’s hand.

“Let’s check out the kitchen,” Phichit tells them. “I’m starting to get hungry.”

“We could’ve eaten the pizza on the way here if you didn’t send it flying earlier,” says Leo.

“I was excited.”

Phichit ends up prompting Yuuri to follow them by tugging his hand along. The three of them pick through the sea of older teens and little by little, Yuuri starts to loosen up. As long as he’s with someone he knows, he thinks he should be fine.

“Why does the music have to be so loud though?” he finds himself asking aloud.

“It’s to hide all the bad decision that are probably going to be made tonight,” says Phichit. “That’s usually what happens at these things, right? The movies just keep getting crazier and crazier, I don’t know what to expect.”

“I don’t think any of those are like, real life though,” Leo tells him. “The music is usually better for one.”

“Lies,” says Phichit. “All you do is complain about the music wherever we go.”

“That’s not true, I appreciate all forms of music.”

Both of them watch Leo’s face do amazing things when a loud wave of house music washes over them and goes into what sounds like someone’s attempt to scratch a record. And then the dubstep happens.

“I have no idea what we’re listening to,” he says, “but I’m gonna stop it.”

“That’s probably a record time,” Phichit says to Yuuri once Leo stalks off to find the source of the music.

“He’s probably traumatized from that pool party.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t record that. I am so upset with myself.”

It doesn’t take Leo long to find the source of the music, everything is being blasted from large speakers kept at the top of the staircase and a small group made up of 4 teens looking like their keeping guard over it.

“So, now JJ’s screaming,” says one of the boys that suspiciously looks like the one that met them at the door, “my pants are down, and I’m holding a spider by the web coming out of its ass.”

“Hold on,” one of the girls says to him and cuts off the story. (Which is a shame because now Leo really wants to know what that was about.) “We’ve been infiltrated.”

Suddenly, there are four heads that snap in his direction, in sync, wide eyed and demanding an answer silently. For a brief second, Leo wonders if this is what Gabby always meant by theater kids being a little too much to handle for long periods of time. He doesn’t even know how he knows this group is made up of theater kids, but he just knows that’s what he’s looking at right now.

“What’s up?” the first boy asks. “Did someone die?”

“No,” Leo says, although a bit confused. “Why would you even ask that?”

A different girl shrugs at him and says, “It wouldn’t have been the first time we would have to ask.”

Yeah, he just knows in his head these are theater kids.

“So, what did you want?” the first boy asks.

“Um, yeah, I’m here to say your music is bad and you should feel bad.”

“I mixed this myself!”

“Okay, and my message still stands. What are you even using to mix? Well, okay first of all, I guess I should ask what you’re even mixing and why.”

“What d’you know about music?” the other girl asks him. “Not to sound like a bitch, I just wanna know.”

“Okay, lemme tell y’all a little something about music being near the same as complimentary color schemes. Example.”

Leo reaches into his pocket and brings out his phone. “Pass me the aux and I’ll explain everything. Don’t mind the song I’m about to play, it’s my sister’s favorite and she asked to hear it. I’ve got other stuff that isn’t just cumbia.”

“What’s cumbia?”

Leo blinks. “I am going to take all of you on an experience.”

Back to where Yuuri and Phichit stand by to watch what their friend is doing, both are able to see what’s about to happen, and they don’t even need to say anything to each other, they both just know they’ve lost Leo. They couldn’t even hear what was being said, but they have both seen it happen again and again, the aux gets passed and Leo is gone.

“Let’s walk around and see what the other houses have,” says Phichit and starts to walk off before Yuuri can even agree. “What do you think? Is it gonna be the pool party all over again?”

“I hope not,” says Yuuri. “I don’t think he’d survive a jump off a roof here.”

“Or someone flinging chairs at him. These houses are too fancy, I don’t think the people that live here have the plastic stuff.”

“The last thing we need is someone throwing actual furniture at Leo.”

“Gabby would go off though. But, no, oh no, imagine the kind of person that would be able to throw actual furniture? I kinda wanna see it now.”

“Phichit, no!”

Yuuri follows close to Phichit as he leads them both away from where the dancing is and through the kitchen. It’s a little more on the empty side, with only a few kids drinking from plastic cups and a counter filled with opened bags of chips and spilled dips, and on the other side is a sliding glass door left wide open. There’s obviously more people outside where the air is cooler and where the alcohol is freely being given. It’s still a pretty tame scene though, and for a second Yuuri is kind of disappointed that it’s not as wild as the movies make it look, but at the same he’s really relieved that it’s nothing like that because he doesn’t know how he would handle that to be honest.

“I’m gonna get a beer,” Phichit tells him. “I’m gonna try it. You want one?”

“I’ll drink from yours to try,” he says. “But I don’t wanna get one just for myself.”

“That’s cool.”

It’s quieter outside, there’s no music playing out here and all they can hear is the thumping backgrounds of the different things being played from every house so Yuuri is able to hear the snippets of conversation around them as they pass everyone by.

It’s nothing out of the ordinary. There are some kids that are complaining about summer school, their part-time jobs, test scores, and college applications. One was even talking about wondering about whether or not they should be starting on their prom dress now since they didn’t want to buy one and didn’t know if they would have enough time to do it all.

It’s all so nonconsequential that he doesn’t realize when Phichit thrusts a cup full of something that smells gross underneath his nose.

“Is that piss?” he asks without thinking and only blinks when Phichit laughs.

“Not enough ammonia,” he says. “So, no.”

“I am so concerned that you know just the amount of ammonia in pee, just so you know.”

“Well, when you have hamsters, y’know?”

“No, because even if I had them, I wouldn’t let them roam all over my bed unsupervised.”

“Cos you’re a terrible person. Try it out, lemme know what you think.”

Yuuri takes the cup into his hand and gives it another sniff. His nose wrinkles and he can feel his face pull down into a grimace, but he takes a drink anyway. It tastes just the way it smells, unpleasant and there isn’t enough peer pressure in the world to make him drink anymore.

“Nope,” he says. “Not having that.”

“That bad?” Phichit asks and drinks from the cup himself. “It’s not that bad. Well, no, it’s bad, but I guess I could drink it.”

“You have fun with that, ‘cause I’m not.”

“That’s cool, you can be the sober friend then. C’mon, I wanna check out the game going on so I can finally figure out how to play.”

Phichit takes up Yuuri’s hand and drags him off the where the game of beer pong is going on. Well, there’s actually not a game going on now, it looks like one just ended and there’s a crowd of boys trying to figure out who’s to play next. Yuuri shakes Phichit’s hand off just long enough to look around to see if there’s a place they could sit and be out of the way but also be able to see the game, and that’s when he hears it.

“Hey! Cutie with the glasses! Come be my partner!”

Yuuri has this near super power that allows him to know when there are too many eyes trained on him. It’s not a blessing so much as it is a curse, because some days it allows his performance anxiety to enhance unbelievably. He’s feeling it right now and latches on to Phichit’s arm before a hand even clamps down on his shoulder. His grip is tight as he turns his head just enough to see an older boy with the largest cow-eyes and longest eyelashes he’s ever seen lean into his personal space with a charming smile.

“My so-called best friend just ditched me,” this boy tells them. “I need a partner for another round.”

He jerks his thumb behind him, showing off the table that is scattered with a number of red plastic cups and is clearly hosting a beer pong tournament.

“I-I don’t know how to play,” Yuuri says, all in a rush. He’s trying to subtly shrug his shoulder away from the hand clasping down on it, but this other boy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care and holds on to Yuuri for dear life.

“I can show you. It’s pretty easy to follow along.”

“That’s okay. I’m fine.”

“I’ll play,” says Phichit. “I don’t know how to play really either, but I’m game.”

The hand falls off from Yuuri’s shoulder and is visibly relieved. It isn’t so bad when the attention is put on Phichit and he’s able to just follow behind. Although, Phichit insists on having him near the table while the game is set up again.

“Rack up your cups!” the boy calls out to the couple of girls on the other side of the table. “I found another partner!”

“Really?” one of the girls calls back. “Dude, really? This kid looks like he’s twelve.”

“Excuse you,” Phichit says with his hands on his hips. “I am twelve and a half!”

The ones close by to hear him laugh, and even the boy that’s brought them over with is laughing and throws an arm over Phichit’s shoulders.

“I like this one,” he announces, “and I’m keeping him.”

That seems to be enough if the shrugs on the other side of the table say anything. The girls go about fixing up their side and Yuuri is scanning the area for somewhere to sit. He doesn’t actually get to move away because the next this he knows Phichit is grabbing his arm.

“You’re gonna stay by with me, right?” he asks. “Like, here at the table. I know I’m older than twelve and a half, but I still need adult supervision.”

“You know, I am only older than you by a few months, right?”

“Great!” Phichit slaps Yuuri on the back like that settles that, and his attention goes back to the boy setting up their cups.

Speaking of the other boy, as soon as the set-up is done, he sticks his hand out to Phichit and says, “My name’s Chris, by the way.”

Phichit shakes his hand a little and gives his own name, Yuuri does the same when the introduction extends to him as well. Someone from the other side of the table calls out for someone else to bring more cans out so they can fill up the cups that are empty. In the time it takes for that to happen, Chris has them all making small talk.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around before,” he tells them. “Usually I see familiar faces at these things.”

“Well, that’s probably because the parties we go to are pretty exclusive,” Phichit tells him with a tone that doesn’t give away that those parties are probably just the ones that they’ve always had with each other.

Yuuri coughs into his hand to hide his laugh.

“Oh? Well, thank you for helping out a commoner such as myself. I’m surprised these _exclusive_ parties don’t have beer pong though.”

“I’ve seen it played, but I’ve never played it. Rule me up, buttercup, teach me your game.”

Chris’ smile is straight from a magazine, teeth white and perfect align, showing off his dimpled cheeks. He directs at Yuuri after a good solid second after just staring at Phichit and says, “You’ve got good taste. He is fun.”

“Oh, no,” Yuuri tells him. “We’re not dating. Just friends.”

Chris lights up. “Even better!”

He throws him a wink and Phichit beams. Yuuri reaches over and takes the beer out of Phichit’s hands to take another swig. It’s still gross, and he still winces when it washes over his palate, but he’s never understood why anyone would “need a drink” until this very moment. If they start to flirt in front of him, his second-hand embarrassment will know no bounds and he doesn’t know if he can be sober for that.

Yuuri only half-pays attention to the rules, his hearing keeps going in and out of focus between what Chris is telling Phichit, the music that is coming from house number 3, and the shrieks of someone being pushed into the pool. He’s also still wondering why anyone would willingly want to drink beer, but he keeps taking a sip from it, so maybe he’s not one to talk.

Yuuri is happy enough to stay by the side lines and watch as Chris talks Phichit through the first game, and everyone is surprised to see how good of a shot his friend really is. They clear the first round easily and they start doing well against the second pair that go up against them, but the new pair is better, and Phichit is drinking straight from the cups their balls have been landing in.

“You think you should be drinking so much?” Yuuri asks him, only a little worried.

“It’s just Bud Light,” Chris tells him with a light laugh. “It’s not that strong.”

“Still gross though,” Phichit says.

“All beer is gross.”

“Cool, so it’s not just me,” Yuuri says, even though one is really listening to him anymore.

It’s after this game, and right before their second, that Phichit leans over close to Yuuri and tells him about how he’s now planning to get Chris’ social media from him. Yuuri can’t say that he’s really all that surprised since Phichit has a habit of doing that with every stranger he meets, but there’s a glint in his eyes that does makes him lean back a little. Not that Phichit notices, really, he’s too busy smiling his head off.

“I mean, look at this guy.” He jerks his thumb at the boy setting up their side of the table. “He’s really pretty and I am feeling very weak.”

“You’re settling into being open with the whole liking boys thing pretty easily, huh?”

Phichit shrugs. “The night started out with us making fun of a stunted kale monster and it’s gonna end with us at party that has a beer pong table after each one of us was kind of outed in some way, so, why not?”

Well, when he puts it like that…

“We got two more rounds before the final,” Chris says after the setup is complete. “You with me all the way on this?”

Phichit’s hands are on his hips again and the level of confidence he radiates is near papabile. “Let’s knock ‘em dead.”

Yuuri steps back to give them some room and is content to watch on the sidelines as the new game starts and goes on. He’s a known wall flower after all, and he’s fine with that. He already has the two friends, he doesn’t need any more.

(That’s not actually true, because while he might not talk to anyone outside of their trio in school, Yuuri is pretty popular at the dance studio. He might not notice it much, but the girls outside of his own classes know him and respect him, and the girls he dances with love him and he cares for them just as much.)

(They’re their own brand of family.)

In any case, it’s about half way through their game that things start to get awkward… for Yuuri, at least.

“I don’t believe you’ve never played before,” Chris says after watching Phichit sink another shot flawlessly. “I’ve never seen anyone aim like that their first time around.”

“What can I say?” Phichit laughs. “I’m a natural when it comes to handling balls.”

Yuuri chokes but it’s overshadowed by Chris laughing.

“I’m pretty sure I can show you a thing or two about handling balls though,” Chris says, and oh, god, he’s winking again.

Yuuri finds himself falling into being a third-wheel now, that much is obvious. And watching this, well, flirting, happening is giving him some second-hand embarrassment. It makes absolutely no sense as to why that much is happening, but he’d rather make an escape than continue to watch whatever this could turn into because if it’s one thing Yuuri would rather not be, it’s the creep friend that watches his friends make out with people just because he’s standing nearby.

(He did it once while in the presence of a friend from the studio and her boyfriend. He’s not doing that again.)

“I’m gonna go find, Leo,” Yuuri tells Phichit.

Phichit, without even looking away from Chris, asks him, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, just go ahead and find us when you’re done, I guess.”

“Kay.”

“You gonna be okay by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

He’s still not even looking away from this older boy and Yuuri cannot find it in him to try to change that or finesse himself away fast enough.

The thing is though, there are more people than he remembers passing now that some time has passed, and apparently the later it gets, the more guests arrive. He doesn’t understand that because wouldn’t you want to come closer to a party’s start time to get in as much partying as possible? Being fashionably late doesn’t suit someone like him, he guesses. He might have too much common sense.

Or just worry and overthink things, that one’s most likely it.

Anyway, Yuuri is pressing through a crowd of people and trying to get back to the first house that they came out from when he hears his name being called over all the noise.

“Yuuri!”

Yuuri spins around quick. It didn’t sound like Leo, and he didn’t think that there would be anyone else here that would know him. There’s a spike of anxiousness that goes through him, but it dies down quick when he sees Yuuko’s face in the crowd and coming right at him.

“Hey!” he calls out to her with a smile and raises his hand to wave at her.

He’s okay with Yuuko; she’s been taking classes with Minako since before Yuuri had even started his own. She’s familiar, and a definite friend, and he’s distracted by her presence that he almost misses the other girls that follows right after her.

“What are you doing here?” she asks when they’re both close enough to him to speak. “I didn’t think I would ever see you at a party like this.”

“Well, I mean it is technically my first party?” he shrugs. “If you don’t count all the ones I’ve gone to for like, my friend Leo’s cousins and our sleepovers.”

“Everyone’s growing up so fast,” she says with a tone that doesn’t at all suit her. To Yuuri, she sounds like a mother that’s watching her children grow up, but then again Yuuko always had that kind of aura around her. Even if she isn’t all that older… “I only say that because Sara’s here too! She came with me to get away from her brother for the night. If you see him at the studio to pick her up though, don’t tell him.”

“Sara?”

And like she’s been summoned, Sara Crispino turns up at Yuuko’s side saying, “I didn’t hear any 80’s music coming from that other house, so that Victor kid you were talking to must be on the other side.”

Yuuko ignores what she says fro the moment in order to say, “Look who I found!”

Sara blinks once before realizing Yuuri is standing in front of her, and when she does recognize him, breaks out into the largest smile.

“Yuuri!” Sara greets and throws her arms around his neck in a hug. “It’s good to see you!

Yuuri freezes at the surprise contact and quickly squirms out of her hug with a watery smile and a hello of his own. He does hope he didn’t seem to rude, but she doesn’t look like he’s done anything wrong, so maybe she didn’t notice his mini-freak out. A bit of relief passes through him and he’s overcome with that emotion that he doesn’t even hear the question Yuuko asked him.

“What?” he asks her.

“I said, what are you doing here?” she laughs. “Like, I said, you don’t really seem like the partying type. Unless you’re a closet partier and we just never knew.”

“Ah, I’m not, really,” he says. “But, Leo, my friend Leo, his sister knew about this and him and Phichit thought it would be cool to come along and I was with them and…”

He breaks off with a bit of a hand gesture

“And the rest is history?”

The girls laugh, and it takes him a split second that it’s _with_ him and not _at_ him, and he relaxes with them.  They’re easy company, and he falls into conversation with them soon enough and even follows them around as they go about finding the other girls that have come with them. Most of them Yuuri knows from the studio, but Sara and Yuuko are the only ones there that also take classes with Minako personally like he does.

“You wanna hang out with us?” Yuuko asks him. “We’re heading over to what they’re calling the 80’s house. I heard from a reliable source that that’s where they’re keeping all the jello shots.”

“I’ll come with you guys,” he says. “But which one is the 80’s house, cosI kinda wanna know where I’m going.”

“It’s the last one, I already checked out the other one,” Sara tells him and points to the one on the opposite side of the pool. “A lot of the other girls are hanging out in that one-” she jerks her thumb to the house behind her where they must have come from “-but all of their drinks are being used for beer pong.”

“I guess I can help you guys carry things back,” Yuuri shrugs.

“And hang out with us! It’s just the girls from the studio, they’d love to see you!”

In the end, Yuuri ends up following them anyway, and at first he’s resigned himself to helping them gather drinks for the others and listening to their conversation, but he gets dragged into that as well.

“I’m still kind of bummed out you didn’t take the chance to come to the same school as us,” Yuuko tells him as they walk. “You’re already so good, you’d be great in class!”

“I’m not that good.” Yuuri waves off the compliment easily. It’s what he does. “And I’ll still see you at the studio. Until you get signed away to a dance team and forget all about me.”

“No,” Yuuko laughs. “Pretty sure that’s going to be you.”

“I could never forget you! Either of you, really.”

“But I’m still sad that we’re not gonna be going to the same school together,” Sara says. “You are literally the one boy I know who isn’t a complete jerk, and one that my brother likes.”

“Mickey likes me?”

“Well, he likes you more than others. Well, he tolerates you more than others. Well, it’s more like he doesn’t badmouth you in front of me at least.”

Yuuri stares at her. “It’s something I guess.”

“Still,” Yuuko cuts in to say. “It sucks that your parents keep making you go to private schools.”

“Ah, well, no, they’re actually not,” Yuuri confesses. “I asked them if I could. I wanted to go.”

“Why?”

“Because, well, Leo’s family can’t afford the high school so he’s going to public school, and that means Phichit would’ve been left alone if I went to school with you guys, and that just made it sad. Y’know, to see us all separated like that, so I wanted to stay with Phichit, cos at least Leo already knows kids that are going to his school.”

He shrugs. “Besides, Phichit’s one of my best friends, and I know he can make friends easily, but it’s always been us three that were the closest and I just want to be near him.”

The two girls stop in their tracks, right outside the sliding door of the house and look at him, really look at him. It makes him feel a little self-conscious and is left wondering what he said wrong until-

“Yuuri!” Sara ends up crying. “You’re so sweet, Yuuri!”

“I always knew you were such a good kid!” Yuuko joins in. “Don’t let anyone ruin you, you’re perfect.”

“I don’t know about that,” he mutters.

“Hush! Come on then,” she grabs his hand and leads him through the door, “let’s get something to drink to celebrate what a good person you are and then head back.”

“I already tried beer,” he tells her. “I don’t like it.”

“There’s other things. You shouldn’t go off the rails, but it’s a party and you’re young, you can find something you like.”

There’s a small knot of anxiety that settles in his chest over the thought of drinking, and to be honest, if he didn’t trust Yuuko as much as he does, Yuuri probably would have ran somewhere and found a closet to lock himself in until he could calm himself down enough to call Phichit or Leo. But he knows Yuuko won’t do anything to put him in a situation that could embarrass him. He trusts her.

Which is why he tries the drinks she mixes for herself and Sara before heading back, and after wrinkling his nose at them both, takes the jello shot she gives him after saying that it might taste sweeter than the others if it’s not made too strong. She shows him real quick how to shoot it back and cheers him on after he follows her exact moves. It is sweeter, and for the first time he thinks that maybe he’s found the drink for him. It barely tastes like anything, so how bad could it be? It probably doesn’t even have that much alcohol in it, he can do this.

There are multiple trays made up, so he takes one for himself. He can pass them along to whoever else they’re meeting up with and just drink from there. He doesn’t bother to stop the people reaching over him to grab one for themselves, because what’s the use and beside there’s plenty, so it’s not a big deal.

The other girls, as it turns out, are not many. It’s three other girls that he knows from the studio: Monica, Nina, and Tasha. All of them have lessons with Minako personally, all of them have danced together and Yuuri feels a little more relieved when they all squeal his name and bring him into their circle like he belongs there with them.

“What happened to Jasmine?” Yuuko asks after the drinks are set down. “I brought her that gross watermelon vodka she likes.”

“She took off with that pretty boy you were talking to,” says Nina. “It was kinda sad.”

“He didn’t even look like he wanted her to follow him,” Monica says and takes a shot from Yuuri’s tray. “But she took off anyway. Just like always.”

“She knows I don’t like anyone going off alone.”

“Relax, 9 times out of 10 we’re gonna find her locked in a closet and crying because of this. That kid’s a heartbreaker.”

“I don’t think Victor’s like that, but I guess you’re right, we’ll probably find her locked in that one linen closet again.”

“Or the pool room! If no one’s being gross in it.”

Yuuri has no idea what’s happening, so he prods at another jello shot and shoots it back easier than the first time. It’s something he keeps repeating, just so that he has something to do while the girls talk. He can’t really contribute much to their conversation unless one of them brings him in, and that only starts to happen when Monica makes a joke toast about hoping they’ll be lucky that Sara’s brother doesn’t find where she is and ruin their good time.

“Here’s to terrible siblings,” Sara toasts and shoots her drink back.

Yuuri joins her, raises his glass, and gives a mighty, “Hear, hear!”

“Your sister is not that bad,” Yuuko laughs.

“Is she Mickey bad?” Yuuri replies. “Well, no, no one is that bad.”

Sara makes and indignant noise. “Hey!”

“But lemme tell you something about Mari Katsuki!”

“Yes, please!” Nina is smiling way too large. “I need something to tease her back with after the whole crayfish thing from last year!”

Yuuri is picking up another shot without thinking about it, and points it at Nina. “I got something you can use. Cos lemme tell you, she loves to embarrass me, so I’m gonna do the same.”

And suddenly, Yuuri is the life of their little circle. He tells the embarrassing stories he knows, particularly his favorite that involves a too hot summer and the fattest burrito the Katsuki siblings have ever seen, he’s mellowed out and making jokes. The girls are laughing and he’s having a good time.

“It’s good to see you guys around here,” he’s said for maybe the fourth time in the span of their conversation. “I’m so glad you guys are here.”

“It’s a good thing we found you then,” Sara says. “What were you doing, wandering around out there anyway?”

“I was actually going to find my friend Leo, just to make sure he’s okay and all that.”

“Oh, should you be looking for him now? Like, does he get anxious at parties?”

Yuuri thinks about that.

 

* * *

 

“Okay, the thing people need to know is that punk music didn’t originate with The Ramones and it sure didn’t start in CBGB,” Leo tells the group of kids he’s pretty much immersed himself with. “Y’all know what that stands for, right? Country, Blue Grass, and Blues.”

“So, who was the first punk band?” one of the girls ask.

“See, that’s where it gets muddles, because it’s easy to say that it’s the Sex Pistols because they came out sounding like nothing anyone had heard before, not really, and dressing in a style that was based off of poverty and not fashion, but then you also got to look at what their influence was music wise and take into account what the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop were doing at the same time.”

“How do you know so much about punk music?” the front door doppleganger asks him. “No offense, you don’t look like the kind of person that would listen to that.”

“Full offense, don’t say things like that, someone will knock you out one day, and I know so much about all music, it’s my thing. Now, let’s fast forward a few years so I can get into why disco is actually relevant to this and the point I was making about how you could probably actually make a good mix with that.”

 

* * *

 

“Nah,” says Yuuri. “I’m pretty sure he’s okay.”

Suddenly, Monica is letting out a little scream. “Sara! Guess who walked in?!”

Sara pales. “Please, tell me it’s not Mickey.”

“No, it’s good news!” She points, not at all subtlety, towards the front door. “Look!”

All at once, the entire group follows her finger and the others know who they’re staring at, but all Yuuri can see is a grumpy looking Korean kid that looks like he would literally rather be anywhere else. Apparently, if the way Sara starts acting is anything, this is exactly who they’re all talking about.

“What is he doing here?” Sara is asking in a low-key near panic tone. “He never comes out to these things, I’m always asking him.”

“Maybe he’s finally realizing you’re a catch and is here to whisk you away off your feet?”

“Wait, who’s that?” Yuuri asks.

“His name’s Seung Gil and Sara’s been crushing on him since March,” Nina tells him.

“Shut up!” Sara hisses and slaps her shoulder.

“He’s gonna find out anyway because we’re all talking about it!”

“Well, whatever happens, y’all gotta fill me in,” says Tasha who is prodding at her phone. “Jasmine just sent me the SOS to get her out of the closet, she must have gotten her heart broken again.”

“You need anyone to come with you?” Yuuko asks her.

“Nah, it’s the same one as always. Besides she just sent the SOS out, it’s gonna take like another half hour to get her out.” Tasha grabs a hold of Sara and looks her in the eye. “You got this, mamita, you’re strong, amazing, and wonderful, and these are my words of truth I give to you. Whatever happens, you’ll get a happy ending.”

Sara looks like she’s about to cry. “I love you.”

Yuuri is still staring at this Seung Gil kid who shows absolutely no emotion whatsoever and thinks to himself that if he didn’t want to come to a party, then he shouldn’t. That makes him think of his own actions and is it hypocritical of him to say that? He kinda ended up here via peer pressure…. Whatever, he’s gonna have another shot.

“Should I go talk to him?” Sara’s asking the group once Tasha is gone and is ready for a plan of attack. “What do I even say?”

“No, man, you gotta get his attention and make him come to you,” says Nina. “My Tia Raylina always went with that, she always said that any guy that doesn’t make a move to get you, isn’t worth the time.”

“Okay, but how do I do that without even going over to him first? That sounds like shoddy advice, not gonna lie.”

“I’ll yell his name and you stand there and look pretty?”

Yuuri snorts and doesn’t even look the least bit ashamed to do it. “That doesn’t sound like it would work at all.”

“Then you guys come up with something, I don’t know.”

Yuuko goes back to just telling Sara to just go and approach this guy that she likes. This leads to Sara amping herself up to do just that. She brushes out the imaginary wrinkles in her outfit, throws her shoulders back, and walks all of four steps away before turning right back around and talking about being too much of a nervous wreck to do that _someone save her_.

(This is probably the one moment where Yuuir relates to someone on a spiritual level. He even says this out loud, but no one is really paying attention.)

(It’s a shame.)

“Well, you gotta get his attention somehow,” says Nina.

Sara near glares at her. “Yes, I know that! Thank you!”

Yuuri doesn’t know how much help he could be in a situation like this. He wasn’t lying before, there hasn’t been anyone he’s been interested in enough to actually have to worry about any of this. Lately, his only real concern is being able to start the new school year without too much of a fuss, hope Phichit doesn’t get bored of him always hanging around when there could be more interesting people to be friends with, and he knows that’s a stupid thought but he remembers the friends Mari used to have in middle school that stopped being friends with her in high school and if that scene by the beer pong table is anything, Phichit doesn’t need Yuuri around and Leo will probably find cooler kids to hang out with at his school and Yuuri is going to be dumped by both his friends and grow up alone and friendless for the rest of his life!

He blinks.

That was a thought that escalated, very quickly.

He was having a good time, why does he gotta feel anxious all of a sudden? None of that had anything to do with anything that’s going on now so why?

He hates these moments. When one random thought takes over and slips away from him and suddenly everything is hyperfocused on one improbable what-if and that’s it. How do people not worry and overthink, he would like to know. Thank, god, he has the whole dance thing to fall back on to keep him out of his own head.

Although sometimes, the putting on a show for other people to gawk at him can make it worse on bad days, but at least on the good days he’s able to take a compliment. It’s a testament to Minako after all, their teacher brings out the best in them so they can shine so bright…

Oh…

Sara should dance!

“Sara!” he calls out for her and clutches her arm. “Sara, I know what you should do! And you don’t have to do it alone!”

“What?” she asks.

“Let’s go dance, Sara!” he tells her excitedly. “We can do that one choreography Minako was helping us put together last week. It’ll show you off and grab everyone’s attention, including this guy!”

“Oh, my god, yes!” shouts Monica. “But y’know what you guys should do? You guys should do that one I was showing you from the lyrical classes! The one that Minako said you were too young to do.”

“This isn’t the right song, though,” Yuuri says to her. And he’s right, they were shown that to a different song than the one that’s playing, he remembers that much before Minako came back from that call she needed to take and took back control of her class.

“No, but it could work if you matched the tempo. Proabably.”

“Probably. Yeah, we could probably do it.”

It’s at this moment that Yuuko gives him an odd look, then shoots a look to at the neat stack of plastic cups next to him. “How many of those jello shots did you have, Yuuri?”

Yuuri laughs because for some reason, her asking just seems funny to him. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, God.”

Yuuko is putting her head into her hands and is muttering something about being an irresponsible supervisor, which means absolutely nothing to Yuuri because he’s still looking at Sara and convincing her that she’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. It must strike a chord with her because she gets this look on her face that she is more determined than ever to go forth and get her man.

“Let’s do it,” she says and shoots back her third drink of the night. “Let’s do it, Yuuri, I’m ready!”

“Maybe we should drink some water,” Yuuko is telling them both.

“Good idea,” says Yuuri. “Minako would want us drink water after a dance, good idea, Yuuko.”

“No, I mean like, right now!”

It’s no use though, Yuuri grabs Sara’s hand and is pulling her along with him towards the dancefloor. They’re both laughing, and Sara seems more at ease being in the middle of the crowd with Yuuri at her side.

(Again, he can relate, and if he had any real memory of this come the morning, he would probably view Sara as one of his better friends.)

“Let’s dance around first,” she tells him. “It’ll be a warm up.”

“Good idea,” he says. “And I guess looking at the shoes we’re wearing, we should do what Monica said and do that one.”

“It’d probably be better, yeah.”

The whole idea of getting this boy’s attention, if Yuuri would have been more sober to really think about it, is on that list of Extra™ ideas and scenarios that would come from someone a little more shameless like Phichit and not at all like him. But, it’s a weird night; he’s fourteen and at his first major party with a group of girls that are apparently like party veterans and he’s definitely pushing the line of being completely smashed of the alcohol content he drank. So, he’s not thinking. Instead, he just dances.

Moving with Sara is easy, they have that chemistry that comes with being classmates and performers. Even if their movements are not practiced or rehearsed, they can move together well and mesh with the others moving around them. Yuuri has always had a natural disposition for dance – one that everyone else can see but he has never really believed in himself – and really it’s what people outside of their classmates start to notice slowly and begin to give them the space so they can watch the two.

“How did it even start?” Sara asks, laughing over the music. “Do you remember?”

“I think it started on the floor,” he says. “But we can start it off here can’t we.”

He throws his right arm up, bends it back and moves his body with the motion until his back arches. They can hear Monica cheer over the music and they’re laughing again. Sara moves to stand next to him. Yuuri rights himself, waits for her to be ready and they both do the same move together.

They were only shown this once, only got to follow the moves while Minako had been away so who’s to say what the whole thing really is? It doesn’t matter, Yuuri has a good memory for choreography, he can ask his body to move and it will without hesitation, and he only needs to lead Sara through the motions. And Sara is fantastic! She’s a great dancer and is not even a half-step behind him, she can keep up. She can move her body and sway it to the same tempo as Yuuri and follow him with nothing more than a side glance and a permanent smile.

Yuuri finds himself smiling back at her. This is the most fun he’s ever had in public like this without either Leo or Phichit at his side.

He moves in close to Sara, wraps her arm around her waist and spins them around, telling her to lean back as they move. She does so without question, trusting him completely, and when she does, it’s the first time he actually makes some form of eye contact with the crowd.

There’s plenty of strangers, their own group against the wall clapping their hands in time with the music and laughing, he’s that one boy Sara’s in love with. Just kind of staring at them, still a little emotionless, but still looking at them. His plan is actually working?

He brings Sara back up leans up to her ear and says, “He was lookin’ at you!”

Sara is delighted; she lets out a little scream and throws her arms around Yuuri’s neck. Unlike last time, he hugs her back completely and they nearly topple over. This seems to be their unofficial end to the routine, at least to those watching, because there is applause and the attention soon falls away from them. Like all things, once it’s over, the novelty of the surprise is over everyone goes back to their own business.

They’re still clinging on to each other, arms thrown over shoulders and moving off to the side when Sara suddenly tenses up and leans in to Yuuri again.

“He’s coming over!” she hisses. “Yuuri, he’s coming over! How do I look?”

“Great!” he replies. “You got this, Sara!”

 She clutches his hand, beaming a large smile and he finds hinself just as excite for her. The two teens shush at each when the other boy gets closer, the anticipation growing and Sara is shining like he's never seen her before when he comes to stand in front of them.

"You move really good out there," he says. No hellos or anything like that, just the simple statement and leaves it at that.

"Thank you!" Sara smiles nver falyers, she is so happy.

"Oh," says Seung Gil. "You too, Crispino, you were good out there."

Yuuri's brow furrows up, he's confused. Sara tenses up again, her face falls and then theres this dawning realization in her eyes that drops the mood incredibly fast.

"Sara-?" Yuuri beguns to ssk, but is cut off when Seung Gil reaches over to place a hand on his arm.

"Can I dance with you?" He asks, and Yuuri is not sober enough to understand what's going on.

"What about Sara?" He asks.

Sara, on the other hand, slides away from Yuuri, her face unreadable and says, "You should dance with him, Yuuri."

This doesnt help clear up the confusion at all.

"But you wanted-"

She leans in close, just enough to whisper into his ear and no one else is able to listen.

“Is it because he’s a boy?” she asks.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he whispers back. “I don’t care about that. But you-?”

“That doesn't matter." She says this lightly, like how her early nerves and obvious crush is a small joke she can brush off even if her voice sounds a little too tight at the moment. "Someone should get something out of what we did, go for it!"

"You're okay with that?"

"Nothing would make me happier. Show him what Minako's studnts can do!"

Shr guves him a gentle little shove towards the boy, smiling. Yuuri is about to say something else, because something just doesnt feel right about this, but Sara waves him off and the other boy has no problem with leading Yuuri away with a gentle tug.

So, Yuuri goes off with him, not really thinkinh twice about it anymore once hes back on the dancefloor in and doesn’t notice Sara still tensed up and walking away back to where their small group had gathered and now only Yuuko remains.

“Where’d the other two go?” she asks.

“Went to go find you a bottle of tequila once Seung Gil started pulling at Yuuri,” Yuuko replies with a little smile. “I told them you were stronger than that, but they said you’d be in need of a shot anyway. You okay?”

“Why does this keep happening to me?!” Her hands are thrown in the air and she looks like she’s on the border of crying or laughing. Either way, it would probably be of the hysterical kind. “Why is it that every boy that I start to crush on ends up not liking girls?!”

“To be fair, we only thought Yuuri didn’t like girls. We didn’t really know.”

“Yeah, well,” she gestures off to where her former crush and soon to be former crush are pressed up against each other on the dancefloor. “There we go.”

“I mean, he could still like girls?”

Sara’s shoulders slump and she leans back against the wall. “It doesn’t matter, I’m still slowly getting over the Valentine’s Day heartbreak so, whatever, nothing can make this night worse.”

Which of course, can only mean that things do get worse.

Neither one of them notices at first, but there is a commotion happening at the front door and people are being shoved to the side by an angry boy who is clearly searching for someone if the scowl on his face and squinted eyes overlooking the sea of faces says anything. He doesn’t spot who he’s looking for, but the person behind him does.

“Oh,” a taller boy sounds out and shakes his shoulder. “Mickey, I see Sara! She’s over there!”

Mickey Crispino, is both relieved and relatively upset to see his sister. Relieved, because he’s spent the better part of the past 30 minutes looking for her since he found out from Emil that she was actually here and not at a slumber party with Yuuko. Upset, because he’s spent the better part of the past 30 minutes looking for her since he found out from Emil that she was actually here and not at a slumber party with Yuuko! And to top it off, his sister is looking upset, which only means that now he’s going to have to fight someone, because how dare anyone make her upset.

He goes straight for her, clearing a path and not caring who gets in her way.

“Sara!”

And Sara…

Her eyes are wide and she can feel her throat being to close up with the struggle of trying to keep so many emotions down and not be _another girl at this party ready to hide away because drama_.

“Please,” she pleads to Yuuko. “Please, tell me it’s not him.”

Yuuko can only give her the most sympathetic look possible. “I am so sorry, Sara. I have no idea how he found us.”

It’s all she’s able to tell her before her brother is right there, hand on her shoulder and forcing her to turn around to look at him. He doesn’t bother with a greeting, asking her if she’s okay, because right now in this moment he needs answers as to why he was lied to.

“You said you were going to have a girl’s night with Yuuko,” he says.

“And that’s what I’m doing,” Sara tells him and slaps his hand away. “Having a girl’s night.”

“The last I checked, a girl’s night didn’t involve being at a raging block party with beer and boys.”

“First of all,” Yuuko cuts in, “what do you know about what girl’s do? And second, I don’t’ know how you found out we were here, but your sister is hanging out with me tonight, not you.”

“I found out because Emil text me asking where I was because he saw Sara walking around and knew that we’re always together. Like a real friend, he lets me know where my sister is.”

“I just thought because, well, he’s always around you,” says Emil.

“I’m allowed to do things on my own,” Sara tells her brother. “We don’t have to be together all the time, Mickey, I can do whatever I want.”

“Not without me, you can’t!”

“Says who? You’re my twin, not my shadow!”

“And what about me, Sara?! Did you ever stop to think about how this would have affected me?!”

“Oh, my God!” Sara cries out, and she cannot hold it back anymore there are tears clinging to her eyelashes. “I can’t deal with you right now!”

She pushes Mickey to the side and rushes past Yuuko, making a beeline for the back door.

“Sara!” both Yuuko and Mickey call out, but Yuuko pushes her brother back as soon as it looks like he’s ready to go after her and fixes him a glare.

“You really need to let her have a life of her own,” she scolds him. “And you really need to learn to not make things about you. Your sister just found out that her crush would rather be grinding up against our classmate, and you’re not helping.”

Mickey is taken aback for about half a second before he’s pushing back and says, “What happens between us is our business, and none of yours!”

“It is when you’re the one making her feel worse,” is all Yuuko says and moves to chase after her friend. “Follow us and you’ll regret it!”

She says it sternly, with enough emphasis that actually gets Mickey to stay behind as she makes to leave the house herself. She needs to catch up with Sara because if it’s one thing she’s learned through going to these kinds of parties over the years it’s that something dramatic is always happening, and never leave a friend alone.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Yuuri.

She just left Yuuri alone.

She ends up cursing under her breath and turns around to where she can see Yuuri still dancing with Seung-Gil just through the archway, but she’s not going to have a clear view of him for long once she leaves the building, and Monica and Nina aren’t back yet, and she doesn’t know where Sara ran off to, it’s going to take her some time to find her if she really tries to hide away. She also doesn’t know what any of the friends that he’s come with actually looks like either…

“Someone help, someone help, someone help,” she chants to herself. “I have an unsupervised child that I might have given too many jello shots and another that’s heartbroken and embarrassed, someone help.”

Of course, there’s no one nearby that she could actually ask, there’s more public-school kids than there are private ones and she doesn’t have a clue as to who is who. She’s just about ready to go back and drag Yuuri with her on her Sara search when a miracle occurs and a literal angel walks through that back door.

“Oh! Victor! Victor, I need a favor!”

Victor Nikiforov, bless this kid, is a year older than her and is only someone she knows in passing really. They’ve only known each for maybe a year or two and only meet at block parties like this, but she knows him well enough to exchange SNS info and tag him in a meme or two, which is more or less being casual friends. She trusts him enough to ask him this much, and besides, he was looking like he wasn’t having that much fun earlier, anyway. If he turns her down, she’ll just go grab Yuuri, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

“What is it?” Victor asks her, and smiles. “I already told you where the jello shots are, what else do you need?”

“Sara, that girl I was with earlier,” she says, “ran off after getting her heart crushed and had to deal with more embarrassment after her brother started storming the place. Anyway, I need to go find her.”

“You need help with that?”

“No, I can go after her myself, but I got another friend dancing with a guy in there and I don’t want to leave him alone, just in case. I mean, you know how some people can get.”

Victor grimaces, and then furrows his eyebrows, and is no doubt thinking about Koreatown.

“Can you just make sure he doesn’t go off with anyone, or anyone starts hassling him, please? I’ll be back to get him off your hands, it’ll be quick.”

“That’s fine, go get your friend. What does this kid I’m babysitting look like?”

“He’s that one right there,” she says and points through the archway towards Yuuri. “Short kid with the yellow flannel around his waist, blue glasses, he’s kind of tipsy, that might be my fault for not paying attention to how many jello shots he had, but thanks Victor, I owe you one, I’ll be back!”

She leaves right after that and she leaves fast, a real girl on a mission, and Victor is left standing in a stranger’s kitchen with his own. Well, that’s fine, and shrugs internally. All he’s been doing is wandering from house to house, gracing people with his presence, and generally feeling bored while doing it. Taking care of Yuuko’s friend, is probably going to be the highlight of his night, wow, what a sad thought.

Nights where he feels like this are stupid, he thinks, but whatever.

He passes through the archway and into the living room, passes by and ignores a kid griping to another about who knows what loud enough to be heard over the music and Victor’s got no time for that drama and makes his way over to Yuuko’s friend. He probably should have asked her for a name, but hopefully this kid isn’t plastered enough that he can’t remember that much.

Although, maybe this kid doesn’t need a babysitter. With the way he moves along with this other boy he’s dancing with, there’s no way he could be anywhere near as drunk as Yuuko made it seem. Still, he should introduce himself at least.

Victor intended to linger nearby, wait until the song ended and it wouldn’t be rude to interrupt. He intended to cross through the dancers and make for that bit of empty wall where he could happily watch away. He never makes it.

“Victor!”

He doesn’t know who calls him. Some girl he doesn’t remember, probably from meeting him at these things time and time again, has her arm raised up and he squints his eyes to get a glimpse of her over the moving bodies, and he doesn’t notice the kid that was mad about something storming by and pushing people out of the way as he makes for the front door.

He’s not prepared for the shove to his chest that makes him stumble into the couple behind him, that in turn causes them to split up Yuuko’s friend and his partner. He’s not prepared to be near trampled on the makeshift dancefloor of a house party, but he’s fully ready to blame Chris for his untimely demise because he knew coming out tonight would be a pain.

Death doesn’t come though, he’s hoisted back up to his feet by someone with a strong grip and being steadied by the fingers clenching into his shirt. He’s ready to thank his savior only to find that it’s the same kid that he’s been sent off to babysit. Blue glasses, yellow flannel, looks like he probably did have too many jello shots, yeah, it’s him.

“Oh, my god,” this kid says just loud enough over the music. “You’re so pretty!”

Victor laughs a little. He knows he’s pretty, and he knows that other people know he’s pretty, but no one’s ever been that forthcoming about it before, it’s kind of funny to hear. “Thank you.”

“No, I mean, you’re pretty. Like, I feel compelled to give you all nine dollars in my purse, pretty.”

That makes absolutely no sense.

“Is that a meme?” he asks.

“Maybe? I don’t know, Phichit is a meme.”

Victor has no idea what a Phichit is, but he’s not given the time to ask. The other boy that he’d been dancing with pushes against Victor’s shoulder, and he doesn’t look happy to have to do it.

“Hey, he was dancing with me.”

Victor, like any person looking to avoid drama, would have shimmied away and let the two go back to what they were doing, but Yuuko’s friend steps even closer to him and holds on tight to his shirt. He doesn’t turn back to face the boy he was dancing with, just tilts his head to the side a little to not be totally rude when he makes a weak little noise at him and gives him a weary smile.

“Yeah,” he drawls out. “Look, um, Sara’s the one that likes you and wanted to dance with you, and I only did because she told me to cos she said it would make her feel better, but I wanna dance with this pretty boy now so… bye?”

Victor, being himself, doesn’t do much to hide away the laugh that comes out of his mouth. He doesn’t even do the decent thing, like pretend that he meant to cough, no, it’s clear that he’s laughing at this poor rejected soul. Said poor rejected soul doesn’t even bother to reply to anything that was said to him. He’s frowning, that’s for sure, but he turns away silently and stalks off somewhere.

“You’re a little heartbreaker, aren’t you?” Victor laughs and then turns his eyes back to the boy holding on to him.

The boy blinks at him, stares for a while and then says, “I’m sorry, you said something but I didn’t really hear because I can’t stop looking at you, you are so pretty.”

He reaches out a finger and pokes at his cheek, and Victor can’t do much more than blink down at him. He has no idea how to handle something like this. Usually when someone starts to cling on them, he’ll set them down somewhere and walk away, but he told Yuuko he wouldn’t do that, so…

“Hey, do you like potatoes?” this boy asks him, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What?”

“Because, people call themselves potatoes when they’re standing next to pretty people, right? But, like, everyone likes potatoes, except not everyone. There’s this guy named Riley at the studio that doesn’t like potatoes and I knew I couldn’t trust him after that, and then there’s Sean who’s allergic to potatoes which he gets really mad about because he’s Irish.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Victor says, but he finds himself still smiling. “But yeah, I like potatoes.”

This doesn’t seem to deter him from stepping away, if anything, this boy just kind of clings on to him closer and use his chest as a chin rest when he tips his head back to show his entire face off to Victor directly. It’s a little flushed and his forehead is gleaming with sweat (from the dancing? From the booze? Who knows?), but that doesn’t stop Victor from thinking he’s probably the sweetest looking boy he’s ever seen.

“You should dance with me” he says with a beauteous smile that is way too bright and maybe a bit too close, but Victor can’t really find it in him to care.

He should dance with him though, right? Yuuko asked him to look after him, right? This counts, right?

“Yeah, okay.”

It totally does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there have been some things getting in the way of this update:
> 
> -graduation season (which is WORSE than any other season please be kind to your bakery workers guys im begging ;A;)
> 
> -my birthday
> 
> -i started 2 new fics (and started a 3rd last night, unposted but i have no self control)
> 
> -getting ready for anime expo (who else is going?! Im only going on sunday but im still excite!)
> 
> Anyway sorry for being so late with this. Hopefully the next chapter wont take as long but.... i already knew it was gonna be longer than yhthis is one so..... //shrug
> 
> I didnt read through this cos i gotta clock into work in 5 so mistakes will be fixed on mon.... no prolly not until thurs cos its fourth of July weekend and work is just bleh


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted this entire part or the series to be like 5k i don't know what happened...

With Victor, most days are “good” days. He gets through them easily enough, with minimal socialization if he’s lucky, but if it happens to be a day where there’s a raging house party or a night out in general with Chris and the regulars, he can deal and even have a good time. On the “bad” days though, where there is no _real_ reason for the heavy wash of melancholy setting firm in his chest and making him want to just stay-in and watch a terrible movie to make himself feel better, it’s so much harder.

And so much more frustrating, because rationally, he _knows_ there’s no reason for him to feel this way. He is so self-aware of this much and it only makes the mood worse, but here he is anyway.

Logically, he knows Chris has the best intentions for bringing him out, but he’s still a little pissed. He really did just want to have a normal night in with his best friend, why is that so much to ask for?

It’s probably petty to admit, but it’s the main reason why he left him to find another partner for beer pong. The other reason is that he was just feeling tired. He’s tired of pong, he’s tired of parties, he’s tired of the games, of the girls that follow after him, of the drama that follows after that, of the socializing, of the smiles, the flirting, the drinks, the music, he is tired.

Even more so when he finally shakes of that one girl (he vaguely remembers her name, he knows she’s a regular and one of Yuuko’s dance friends, but other than that he’s got nothing) and ends up walking through house to house in search of something even remotely interesting because he is literally a so close to just walking back to Chris’ house on his own.

So, maybe it was a good thing that he ended up in the arms of another of Yuuko’s friends. Even after all that “pretty” talk, he isn’t treating him like the other boys and girls do; no following his every step, no subtle and coy bashful flirting, no fawning over him, not really. This boy leads him around on the dancefloor and is the one in charge here, and it’s great. It’s the kind of change of pace he needs on a night like this.

“Hey, what’s your name?” he asks after ducking his head down low enough to press his mouth against his ear. "I should've asked you that."

The boy laughs and squirms away. “That tickles! My name is Yuuri.”

“Sorry. I’m Victor, by the way.”

“Victor! Are you having fun, Victor?!”

He throws his arms around his neck and presses flat against him. Their faces are close and Yuuri has to stand on just the tips of his toes to bop Victor’s nose with his own. It’s a quick little move and Yuuri ends up flat on his feet and giggling against Victor’s chest before he can even really figure out what just happened. He ends up laughing though, his arms moving to wrap around Yuuri’s waist and holds him there.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m having fun.”

“S’good,” he hears Yuuri say and they both start to sway a little.

It’s probably a good thing that the song switched over to a slow one, otherwise they would look a little out of place as they both just keep swaying back and forth, pressed against each other just like this. Victor props his chin on top of Yuuri’s head, making him tuck in even closer.

For a moment, Victor kind of wonders how much time has passed since being swept away like this. It doesn’t feel like very long, but he’s starting to feel how tired his body is from so much dancing so they’ve must’ve been at it for a while now. He wonders if Yuuri is feeling it too, if he needs to get off the dancefloor and relax a little.

He’s about to ask when Yuuri suddenly says, “Do you know where Yuuko went? I was talking to her, and I was dancing with Sara, but I don’t see them anywhere and I don’t know where they are now.”

“Do you want to go find them?”

It really doesn’t surprise if Yuuri does. He can only take up his attention for so long before he would want to go back to his friends.

“Not right now,” he says. “After this song. I like this song.”

“You do? I don’t think I know this song.”

He doesn’t know a lot of American music, if he’s honest, but no one else needs to know that.

“I don’t either,” Yuuri confesses. “But I’m dancing to it with you, and I like you. So, I like this song.”

Victor doesn’t know what to say to that, or what to do with the sudden clutching feeling in his chest, so he lets both of them go and just holds on to this sweet boy clutching on to him. He’s happy to just sway along with him. It’s enough.

When the song ends and the music switches back to something more upbeat, Yuuri breaks away from Victor’s hold and starts moving again like they were never moving slow to being with and keeps with the tempo. It’s clear that he has every intention of having Victor follow his lead again, what with the way he starts to pull at his arms and motioning for him to join him.

“Didn’t you want to go look for Yuuko?” he asks him with a tired little smile.

“Nah, it’s okay. We should just keep dancing!”

Victor tugs him back towards him, putting a stop to Yuuri’s dancing and says, “You’re not getting tired? You don’t wanna sit out for a song or anything?”

Yuuri looks at him like the very idea is ridiculous, and who knows to him it probably is.

“No,” he laughs. “Are _you_ getting tired?”

“A little bit,” Victor confesses, and Yuuri just laughs again.

“Whaaat,” he drawls out in a teasing voice, “you can’t keep up with me?”

He dances backwards, arms up in the air and his hips moving without hesitation. If he really is as tired as he thinks, then the only logical decision would be to let Yuuri go on and dance as he pleases. He can always just watch from the sidelines and look after him from there, but there’s something unappealing about that idea, so he ends up dismissing it entirely. Instead, he keeps to Yuuri’s side and watches him move to the beat all while staring at him intently, trying to draw Victor back in to dance with him and breaks out into a teasing grin that causes Victor to laugh.

“I don’t think anyone can keep up with you,” he says, finally. “You dance too wonderfully for anyone to keep up, Yuuri.”

“Never!” Yuuri replies with all seriousness. “I could never do that.”

He laughs then, like the very idea is impossible, like he isn’t any different from the others that have come and gone in a dancing haze around them and isn’t outshining everyone here. That much is what’s ridiculous, really, and if anything, Victor is even more engrossed with the mystery surrounding this boy.

This boy that he is still very much in charge of looking after, he remembers, and should do a better job of it.

He really needs to get him to stop dancing before he passes out or something.

“C’mon,” Victor says to him and grabs at Yuuri’s hands. “I’m getting thirsty, what about you? I wanna get us something to drink.”

He thinks Yuuri might put up a little bit of a fuss with leaving the dance floor, but he surprises Victor to lead him away with only a bit of a shrug and without any argument or teases. Victor doesn’t think to question it, not really, he only counts himself lucky and leads them away before he loses his chance.

“Can we go back to that 80’s house?” Yuuri asks. “I think I drank all of the shots I brought with me and I wanna have some more of those.”

“How ‘bout some water? I feel like some water would be a good idea.”

The kitchen isn’t full of people, which is probably better since they’ve just spent who knows how long in a crowd of people and the lack of body heat is refreshing. There’s only a trio of boys at a table pushed off to the side, trying their best at flip-cup, but other than that there’s half-empty bottles and coolers only carrying ice to keep them company.

Victor grabs a plastic cup and fills it up with water from the filter attached to the fridge and takes a drink from it first. Yuuri hops up on the counter next to it and slouches against the cabinets. His eyes are soft and there’s a little smile playing at his lips, and he doesn’t stop staring at Victor even as he does nothing more than sip at the water in his hands. Victor can feel a blush on the bridge of his nose, actually feeling a bit embarrassed from being stared at by this oddly endearing boy…

“You gonna give me some?” Yuuri asks, finally breaking the silence between them.

Victor almost asks him what he means but Yuuri leans forward and starts making grabby hands at his water and Victor laughs. He lets him take it, he even fills it up again when Yuuri finishes it and holds it out for a refill. With the way he gulps the water down, it’s pretty obvious that Victor made the right call, this boy would’ve passed out dancing at some point.

“How’re you feeling?” Victor asks him.

“I’m great!” Yuuri tells him, giving Victor a large smile just to prove how great he feels. “This is the best party I’ve ever been to!”

“Oh, so you really are a party animal, then.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yuuri laughs. “I’m a real wild child.”

He curls a little in on himself, still laughing as he tries to finish off his water while his glasses start to slip down the bridge of his nose. They hit the rim of the cup and Victor reaches forward without even thinking about it to fix them. He slides them back up and Yuuri mumbles a little, _“Thank you.”_ and finishes off his drink.

There’s a growing little sensation in his chest that he gets whenever he sees a dog that is just too cute and it’s only fitting because Yuuri is just too cute. Anyone who would stop and actually pay attention could see that, Victor is sure of it.

“No wonder Yuuko asked me to take care of you,” he says. “You’re too cute for your own good.”

“I’m not cute, you’re cute,” Yuuri argues. “Well, maybe not cute because Phichit’s hamsters are cute and I think you’re better looking than them so you’re gonna have to settle for being pretty. Oh, have I told you that I think you’re pretty?”

“Yes,” Victor laughs. “Yes, you have, but you can say it more often.”

“Okay then, you’re pretty.” Yuuri puts the cup down beside him and reaches forward to fluff up Victor’s hair. “Your hair is so fluffy, so that makes it pretty. And your eyes are really blue, and that’s why they’re pretty. You have the cutest nose!”

Yuuri places his hands firmly on Victor’s shoulders and he leans forward, bringing his face in so close that he thinks he’s about to be kissed. But, no, Yuuri bops his nose with his own and pulls away quick, laughing the whole time. Victor stares at him, wide-eyed and feeling his whole face heat up. He’s not one to blush so easily, and he finitely needs to dish out some pay back.

(He said he was pretty after all, how could being overly complimented by a good-looking person now fluster him?)

“I think your nose is cute,” he says and reaches up to poke at Yuuri’s own nose with his finger. “It’s like an adorable little button nose. So cute!”

“M’not cute,” Yuuri pouts and crosses his arms against his chest.

(Victor can see some pink on his cheeks though, and it’s the most adorable thing he has ever seen, there’s no way this teasing isn’t actually sincere.)

“Yes, you are!” He puts both his hands on Yuuri’s face and squishes his cheeks. “You’ve got the cutest pout on the cutest face with the cutest nose.”

He laughs as Yuuri bats his hands away and flails on the counter. He’s still laughing, even as Yuuri fixes him a half-heated glare. Eventually, he stops laughing, but he’s still smiling, and luckily Yuuri isn’t even glaring at him anymore. Well, he’s not even really looking at him anymore; he has his face turned away, but he doesn’t look anywhere near unhappy. He’s not smiling, not really, but his lips are upturned enough that it could be counted as a small smile, and he looks more thoughtful if anything.

“I don’t think I’m very cute,” he says, after some time.

“Well,” says Victor, “lemme tell you something, since I’m so pretty and good-looking, that makes me an expert on all things cute. So, when I say you are, that means you are.”

He cups Yuuri’s chin and makes him look back at Victor, tilting his face up so they can make eye contact and Victor gives him the softest smile.

“I mean it,” he says. “So, do you believe me?”

Yuuri doesn’t answer him, not exactly, or at least not with his words. He ends up throwing his arms around Victor’s neck again, pulls him close and buries his face against his shoulder. After all that he just said, Victor’s a little surprised to feel himself get flustered again, especially since it’s not like this is the first time they’ve been pressed up close to each other tonight.

“Victor, I like you,” says Yuuri. “Can we stay like this? I wanna stay like this.”

Victor’s hands go to Yuuri’s waist, and he just holds him there.

“Yeah, I don’t mind, we can do that.”

“Oh, my god.”

Victor’s attention goes from Yuuri to the sudden intrusion on their private moment and finds Yuuko standing just a little bit away from them with her head in her hands and another girl standing next to her with a drink in hand. Victor recognizes her as part of the group of girls that had been with Yuuko before when he first saw her that night – brown skin, unruly highlighted girls pulled loosely back. He didn’t really get that good of a look at the group, but he’s pretty sure she was one of them.

Not that what he remembers really matters, because he learns who she is soon enough.

“Yuuko! Monica!” Yuuri calls out and slips away from holding on to Victor to wave. “This is Victor and he’s so nice! He danced with and wants to stay with me forever!”

“You didn’t need to say that,” Victor mutters just as the other girl starts to laugh.

“Yuuri, you really gotta stop stealing everybody’s man,” she says. “We did not raise you like that.”

“I don’t do that,” Yuuri argues. “No one actually has a man for me to steal. Except for Yuuko, but she can keep him.”

Monica laughs harder just as Yuuko’s face shoots up and shows off how red that little comment has made her. Victor definitely does the right thing by hiding his smile behind his hand.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Yuuko says and approaches them closer. “C’mon Yuuri, Tasha has Sara and Jasmine in the back of Nina’s car, we can give you a ride back with them.”

“But I wanna stay with Victor,” Yuuri whines and clings to him again.

“Yuuri, you can’t hang around Victor all night,” Yuuko tells him. “Let’s at least go find your other friends if you don’t wanna leave.”

“We should make it quick though,” Monica says while looking at her phone. “Nina says they’ve gone into the ‘joining a convent because they’ll never find love’ mood.”

“We just need to get them away from the party,” says Yuuko. “They’ll sober up when we get back to my place. C’mon Yuuri, let’s go find your friends.”

Yuuri whines again, but Victor can feel him pull away slowly to do as Yuuko said. He reacts without thinking and holds him in place, not letting him move and says, “I can help him find them.”

Yuuko stares at him and then blinks. Excessively. Monica on the other hand, scoffs.

“He really does steal everyone’s man,” she says, and then nudges Yuuko. “Hey, lucky you, he said you can keep yours.”

Yuuko bats her away and says to Victor, “You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s because he’s so nice!” Yuuri says and wraps his arms back around Victor. “Yuuko, Victor is so nice! Y’know he danced with me, even though he’s not very good at it, I could tell cos I had to lead us all the time. Oh, but he is good at grinding though! He was grinding against me and that was fun!”

Yuuko straight up glares at Victor and again, he makes the very wise decision to take it seriously and lets Yuuri go. He’s not able to move away too much since Yuuri is still clinging, but he doesn’t look like he’s trying to take advantage of him less.

“Everybody grinds,” he says in his defense. “I’m not gonna lie and say I didn’t, cos I did, but that’s just how people dance.”

“He’s not wrong,” Monica points out.

Yuuko fixes her glare at her, but Monica only shrugs and sips from her cup. A cup that Yuuri spots and lets go of Victor to start making grabby hands at.

“Can I have some?” he asks. “I’m still thirsty.”

“Sure,” she says and hands it over like nothing.

“Don’t give him that!” Yuuko scolds.

“It’s not like I can take it with me, and he’s plastered, anyway. And I poured a lot, don’t let it go to waste.”

“Just because he’s drunk doesn’t mean he needs more!”

“Yuuri,” Victor says and takes the cup away. “If you’re still thirsty, I’ll get you more water. You shouldn’t be drinking anymore.”

Yuuri looks at him, confused. “But it smells like the tea Leo’s grandma drinks?”

“His grandma drinks fireball,” Monica smiles. “Nice. But really, we gotta go, so let’s find his friends.”

Victor turns away from Yuuri for a second, puts the cup down and looks at the two girls.

“I’m serious,” he says. “If you need to get out of here, I’ll help him find his friends. And if that doesn’t work out he can come sleep it off with me at Chris’ place, it’s not far from here, and nothing’ll happen. Or I’ll message you, whichever.”

Yuuko gives him a hard stare, then looks to her friend. Monica doesn’t say anything either, but there’s a silent conversation happening between them and Victor can only wait until one of them says something. It feels like an eternity before Yuuko finally looks back at him, and even though her mouth is turned downward a little, she looks a little more relaxed than before.

“I’m trusting you with this,” she says finally. “But only because you helped me deal with that creep at the last one, and you seem like a good guy. That being said, you need to take care of this boy.”

Victor tries to give her a reassuring smile, but it might be a little watery when he really considers that he might be getting a shovel talk right now.

“I will-” he tries to say, but is effectively cut off.

“I have all your contact info, I know where you go to school, and I know who you hang out with, if anything happens to this boy, we will find you and we will come for you. Because it’s not just me, you’re gonna be dealing with, it’s a whole studio of girls.”

“The entire Lyrical class is aiming for thighs that’ll crush a watermelon,” says Monica from behind her. “They will use you for practice.”

Victor stares at them, dumbfounded, and can do nothing but blink as all these threats finally sink in. “I understand.”

“Good,” Yuuko smiles and pats his cheek. “Yuuri, I’m going to message you, so please check your facebook in the morning. Can you remember that?”

“I don’t like facebook,” Yuuri says. “But okay, for you, I will.”

“Please, remember.” To Victor, she says, “Don’t let anything happen to him.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Yuuko puts out her hand, and Victor takes it. It’s a little weird, but if a handshake is what it takes for her to take him seriously, he’ll do it. He means it, he’s not going to let anything happen to this boy.

“They have apparently started to make a pact to marry each other if they’re still single by 40,” Monica announces, once again looking at her phone. “I hope someone recorded that, because that would be funny if they did and we could play it at the wedding.”

“Oh, my god, let’s get them out of here,” Yuuko says and starts back for the door. “I’ll talk to you later, Yuuri! Message me!”

“I will,” Yuuri shouts back to her and waves both his hands. Once both girls are gone he puts his hands down and looks at Victor. “Where’s Yuuko going?”

“She has to take her friends home. And we’re gonna find your friends. So, c’mon, lets’ go look for them.”

He steps back to allow Yuuri to jump down, but instead of doing that, Yuuri makes grabby hands at him and asks for help. Of course, Victor helps him, he loops his arms around his waist and lifts him off the counter the best he can and Yuuri leans all of his body weight forward and they both stumble backwards. Yuuri laughs and Victor keeps them balanced as best as possible. He makes sure Yuuri is okay once they’re both standing upright and he notices the cinnamon scent clinging onto Yuuri.

“Did, did you drink that cup?” he asks.

“Monica gave it to me,” is all Yuuri says.

“When did you even do that?”

“When you were all looking at each other. But, I didn’t drink all of it cos it tasted gross in my mouth, but don’t tell her, she gave it to me.”

“I won’t tell her,” he says. “But, c’mon, let’s go find your friends.”

“Okay.”

Victor is ready to lead Yuuri out the backdoor and back into the night air by just a hand on his shoulder, but Yuuri has another idea. He clings to Victor’s arm, rests his head against him and keeps them close so that they’re bodies are pressed together. He even reaches downwards and laces their fingers together, just another way to keep them from having any form of space between them.

“Lead the way,” Yuuri sings and nudges him to move.

It’s probably a good thing, Victor things, that what happens at these things, stays at these things. The silent agreement between all attendees so they can all have fun without worrying about who saw what or heard what that keeps them raging and going and leaving them with only stories to share between party goers when the sun comes up and leaving it up to others to believe what’s true and what’s not.

It’s a good and bad thing, but for him as it is right now when making eye contact with a classmate he can say he knows almost well enough, and the way he’s eyeing the close contact between boys and saying nothing, only pursuing his lips and looking away, it’s a great thing.

There’s no way this can get back to certain people, and that’s fine. Let the kids say what they want. He just doesn’t need his home life to be any more difficult than it already feels.

“Yuuri,” he says loud enough for him to hear over the noise. “Where did you last see your friends.”

They’re both walking through the open space, but Victor doesn’t know where to go. He doesn’t even know what his friends look like or even how many are with him.

“Leo was in some house,” Yuuri tells him. “He was gonna talk to some people about how their music is bad and Phichit… Phichit was playing beer pong.”

“Okay, let’s go check the beer pong.”

Victor weaves them through the crowd and back over to the pool area where games of pong are still going strong. Every now and again, someone calls out to Victor and they stop so he can do his part of socializing, but never for long. Yuuri makes sure to know that everyone that has Victor’s attention that Yuuir is the one he’s taking care of because they danced together and they’re going to stay together forever. Luckily, everyone thinks it’s hilarious and congratulate Victor on his new status as a taken man.

“He’s a little drunk,” he explains with a blush going across his nose and a Yuuri rubbing his face against his arm and clinging all the more. “I’m just trying to help find his friends.”

“Victor,” Yuuri whines. “You’re not paying attention to me anymore, I’m gonna die if you stop.”

“You’re not going to die,” Victor tells him, but leads him away and they start walking again.

“It feels like I am. I don’t like it.” Yuuri gives him the biggest eyes Victor has ever seen and pouts. “You’re supposed to be taking care of me, not talking to other people.”

He can only breathe out a little hapless laugh at Yuuri’s face and grips his hand tighter. “I know, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t stop paying attention to you.”

That’s enough to keep Yuuri happy until they reach the pong table, and from then Victor is scanning the crowd but he doesn’t see Chris anywhere and figures he must have gotten bored with the game and wandered off somewhere else. He should probably check his phone in that case, they usually keep each other updated when they separate like this.

“Yuuri, what did your friend look like?” Victor asks.

At first, he gets no reply, and he thinks that Yuuri just didn’t hear him, and that’s likely too. However, when he looks to Yuuri and sees his face scrunch up and his eyes darting everywhere, it makes him worry a little.

“Yuuri-?”

“I don’t see him.”

His voice is low, but it’s strong, and there’s genuine concern there. Yuuri shakes himself off from Victor and steps away, giving them the most space between them that they’ve had all night really and stalks off closer to the game. Victor calls after him, follows him, and grabs his arm. He tries to keep him still, but Yuuri keeps shaking him off and wanders around in something like a bling panic. His head is swiveling in all directions and his breathing is picking up. It’s like he’s on the verge of hyperventilating and Victor grounds him down, putting his hands on his shoulder and bringing him to look at him.

“Yuuri,” he says. “Yuuri, look at me, look at me. Breathe with me, you’re gonna be okay.”

It takes a while, and a lot of coaxing from Victor, but Yuuri calms down enough that he’s able to answer Victor when he asks him again to tell him what’s wrong.

“I don’t see Phichit anywhere,” he mutters, and looking so sad that Victor’s heartstrings tug.

“Do you remember who he was with the last time you saw him?” he asks. “Maybe we can find them and see where he went.”

“Um… I don’t… No, I do, he had cow eyes.”

“Cow eyes?”

“Yeah, and curly hair. His name was Chris. I’m pretty sure.”

Chris?

Oh, that makes all of this so much easier.

“I think I know who you’re talking about, hold on.”

He pulls out his phone from his back pocket and notices for the first time that there’s been a string of text messages and a missed call from Chris. He doesn’t read them, not really, he just fires out his own asking if he’s with Yuuri’s friend. It takes another minute or so for him to get Yuuri to describe his friend so that he could describe him to Chris. They both end up huddled around Victor’s phone waiting for a response, Yuuri clinging back on to him once more, and the both startle when the message comes in.

_Chris  
yeah that’s who im with right now_

_Chris  
btw get him to message phichit back he’s been texting him nonstop_

“Phichit’s been texting you nonstop,” Victor tells him. “Where’s your phone?”

Yuuri stares at him. Blinks. Then stares at him so more.

“I don’t think I have it,” he says. “No. No, I don’t. I left it in the living room cos I thought I would lose it and didn’t need it anyway.”

Victor gives him a long hard look and wonders if that’s how Sober Yuuri thinks, then is there anyone out there that looks after him on a regular basis, this kid needs a chaperone.

“Is it really Phichit though?” Yuuri goes back to staring at Victor’s phone like it can give him his answer. “How do I know for real?”

Victor huffs out a little laugh and messages Chris back, saying that Yuuri doesn’t have his phone, but he’ll be with him and to send a picture to calm this boy down.

He gets a picture back, shows it Yuuri who squints at screen and then sags against Victor’s arm in what can only described as complete relief.

“That’s him,” he says. “Y’know, Phichit is my best friend, I think I would willingly kill someone for him if anyone hurts him. Oh, tell this guy that, I want him to know not to hurt him otherwise I will hurt him.”

“What is with all of you threatening to hurt other people?” Victor asks but sends the message anyway.

Yuuri doesn’t answer him, but he seems satisfied enough and is suddenly back to being as carefree as before. Which is fine with Victor, seeing him back to being this way is a lot better than the near panic attack he was close to seeing Yuuri go through. He’s just about halfway through thinking of how he would have absolutely no idea what to do if that really happened when his phone buzzes again.

_Chris_  
phichit says the same thing  
i think these boys mean it

They probably do…

“Phichit says that I need to take care of you too,” Victor tells Yuuri. “Or he’ll hurt me.”

“He means it,” says Yuuri. “But it’s okay, I won’t let him.”

He looks up at Victor, then, half of his face hidden from being pressed into Victor’s jacket and his glasses tilted off center from the odd angle.

“I’ll take care of you too,” he says, and Victor can feel his cheeks turn pink.

Yuuri is just so cute and perfect… Is this a crush? Is he getting a crush on this boy? This is a first, he’s avoided any of this for so long, he has no idea if this is the real thing.

All the same, Victor doesn’t get the chance to really think about any of this because Yuuri is tugging his sleeve and asking, “But Phichit is okay, right? You know the guy he’s with, right?”

“Chris is my friend,” he says. “And he’s a good guy, he won’t let anything happening to your friend.”

Which is true, Chris is a good guy and wouldn’t let someone get hurt or taken advantage of while he was around…

Wait…

Victor scrolls back up to the picture Chris sent him and looks at it, _really looks_ at it this time.

It’s not that great of a picture, they’re somewhere dark where Chris needed to use his flash and they’re both smiling at the camera, but what Victor is looking at is the background. Because when he first saw it, he kind of thought it was what it looked like, but he was a little more preoccupied with making sure Yuuri knew where his friend was.

They’re definitely inside, and from how Phichit is posed, they’re both lying down on what can only be a bed, and yeah, it’s a bed, because that is definitely a headboard above them and that’s a pillow behind Chris.

Victor’s mouth twists down in a little frown. Chris, for all that he knows, and he really should know because Chris tells him _everything_ , is still technically a virgin and wouldn’t… not here, not at a house party. Make out in a closet and willingly strip to get in a hot tub, yes, but anything else?

He doesn’t tell Yuuri what he’s thinking, he’ll get an answer out of his friend and if he needs to intervene than he’ll find them, but he might be over reacting.

Maybe.

He shoots off a text anyway.

 

* * *

 

_Victor  
_ _why are you in a bedroom?_

_Chris  
because its comfortable?_

_Victor_  
are you serious???  
because i am???

_Chris  
we’re not gonna do anything. we’re just talking._

_Victor  
okay mr every sleepover ive ever had has ended in a handjob_

_Chris  
oh ye of little faith_

_Victor  
don’t @ me right now_

_Chris  
lmao don’t let your mom know that_

_Victor  
i’m actually having a good time right now don’t bring her into this_

_Chris_  
ooooohhh the cutie with the glasses is a cutie huh??  
told you you’d meet the love of your life  
i get to be the best man

_Victor  
i suddenly don’t know how to read_

 

* * *

 

Chris is laying on his back and with his phone hovering over his face as he reads Victor’s last text. He scoffs a little and tosses it back down to where it was between him and Phichit.

“So, I guess my best friend is looking after your best friend,” he says and twists over back onto his side

“That’s good,” Phichit mutters against the pillow. “I seriously cannot believe that he left his phone at Leo’s.”

“Well, as long as we know he’s safe.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence, then. It’s only the sound of the music from downstairs seeping up through the floorboards in a muffled soundtrack along the muted conversations and other happenings that are going on outside of this room.

They really shouldn’t be in this room, in all honesty. The upstairs was sealed off from everyone not living in this house (which house were they even in? they don’t even know), but here they are anyway, lying on a stranger’s bed together and being perfectly okay with it.

“I didn’t think my night would go like this,” Phichit finally says. “It was just supposed to be like all of our other end-of-the-year-sleep-overs, but here I am.”

“Is that a good thing though?” asks Chris.

Phichit shrugs. “I can’t really explain it. I know it’s because of me that we’re here, because I’m the one that started the whole bugging Gabby to let us come here. But to be honest, I don’t know why I did it? We were laughing at this kale monster on TV, and I just had this… moment of clarity that if something didn’t change now, then we were always just gonna be as we were, and I think there’s something more for us, y’know? Does that make sense? That doesn’t make any sense, right? Like, how would I even know that?”

Chris looks at him for a lot longer than probably necessary, taking in the face of this younger boy and seeing a lot of himself in Phichit from the before days when he didn’t know how to be comfortable with himself let alone how to help other people.

“I think I get what you mean,” he ends up saying. “It’s like me seeing Victor tonight. I know he didn’t want to come out, but I also know that if I let him have his way he was gonna end up overthinking everything and close up and shut me out and go into another rut that takes me forever to get him out of. And when he does it’s terrible, and no one else notices cos he doesn’t act much different in school, but he ignores my texts, my tags, doesn’t talk to me and there have been times I’ve had to sneak into his window to make sure he’s actually eating when his mom’s not around to cook and not just constantly stress baking. Or depression baking, whatever you wanna call it.”

“Oh, god, he sounds like Yuuri.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Yuuri’s pretty much like that too. Sometimes, but I can’t even figure out when it’s going to happen because he hides it so well. Like, I tell him all the time to let me in, let me help, I want to help, but he’ll shut me and Leo out and before we know it, he’s gone on us. He’s always quiet so no one else notices, and he either always locks himself in his room or does his thing at his dance studio, but that’s not all that different from what he usually does anyway, so it’s always a guessing game. The only time I’m ever really, really, _really_ sure is if his sister shoots me a text. Otherwise, who knows?”

“And we left them alone together?” Chris laughs. “Oh, no, that was a terrible thing.”

“Should we go rescue them from each other?”

“Hm… no, I think they’ll be fine. Besides, I think he’s finally having a good time.”

“Your friend doesn’t like parties either?”

“What? Neither does yours?”

“Not really. He’s only ever been to family stuff, really.”

“Huh, maybe they’re perfect for each other then. Oh, well I guess I should ask if he even likes boys before I start working on my best man speech.”

Phichit doesn’t respond, not right away in any case. He’s not looking at Chris, he’s starting down at the paisley pattern on the comforter beneath them and is tracing along the stitching.

“Maybe?” he says. “We literally all just came out to each other tonight, it was kind of funny in a way, but Yuuri didn’t really mention liking one or another or both. I think he’s still figuring it out. Oh, Gabby said he’s probably ace, but you can still like boys and be ace, so who knows?”

He stops his tracing and looks thoughtful. “Yuuir might not be the kind of person to care too much. For as long as I’ve known him, he hasn’t shown much interest in anyone, but there are people that he admires and if he ever realized that he’s someone that could be loved too, he could love them back. That’s just what I feel though, who knows. Either way, if he falls in love with a boy, his parents will love both of them. He’s lucky like that.”

Chris knows this. He knows this expression on Phichit’s face because it’s the same one he’s seen on Victor before and he’s seen it on many boys, really. It’s just terrible.

“You’re going to St Agatha’s, right?” Chris asks.

“We both are,” Phichit tells him. “Leo would too, but yeah.”

“Yeah, you told me that. But are your parents, really…. y’know?”

“I mean, my mom kind of is?” Phichit answers, unsure. “She’s a true believer, no doubt there, but for the most part she’s not like, judgmental or anything. Personally, I think she’s one of those that it doesn’t bother her, but it might if it’s anyone in her family. My dad on the other hand, well… y’know.”

“I kind of don’t,” Chris tells him. “I mean, I do, but I also don’t? I never had to worry about that. My dad always encourages me to learn the most about myself and my mom was bi and polyamorous. I grew up knowing that loving more than one person doesn’t mean you love them differently. She had a hard time though, especially with my grandparents about that because they didn’t understand, especially my grandfather. He was a real bible thumper, and he stopped talking to her when she moved down to live with a girlfriend.

“I liked Cherise, she was nice enough, but after mom died, I had to come back to live with my dad. She didn’t know what to do with a teenager and I knew she didn’t want kids anyway, so after the funeral I just started to pack up my stuff cos I already knew...”

It takes him a bit to notice, but at some point, while he was talking Phichit had taken his hand and held it with such a comforting touch that when he squeezes it Chris feels himself choke up but clears his throat and acts like nothing is the matter.

“Anyway, I had to come live with my dad, cos my grandpa didn’t want me to live with them and I wasn’t going to fight that because I didn’t want to live with them either. My grandma was kinda trying to convince me to show my grandpa that I was different from my mom but when I made it a point to say I’d rather live with my heathen-atheist father, she stopped talking to me too.”

“So why are you going to St Agatha’s?” Phichit asks him. “My mom signed me up, and I know Yuuri is only following after me, but why you?”

“My mom was a catholic. It’s how she grew up, and she really did believe. She enrolled me at Our Lady when I lived here during elementary school, and it didn’t really speak much to me then, but there was this priest there that really made me believe in the things she was saying were the actual truth and I guess I just started believing too? My dad doesn’t get it, but like I said, he encourages me to know who I am so when I asked him, he agreed.”

It falls quiet between them; a sudden blare of music rocks the window before it’s scaled back down and there are people shouting but neither one of them is paying any of that any attention. Phichit is still holding Chris’ hand, and it’s a comforting little anchor, more than anything else, but it’s not like he can hold on to it forever. He gives it a little squeeze, lets it go, and gives Phichit his best smile.

“So, what do you wanna be when you grow up?”

Phichit laughs. Maybe it’s better for them to get away from heavy conversation, and back to the more light-hearted-getting-to-know-each-other conversation. He goes with it.

“I want to get into photography,” says Phichit. “And yeah, I know, that’s like something everyone wants to do, but I just feel like I’m really creating something when I capture something on camera. I want to take temporary art and make it permanent.”

“I guess I’d be the opposite, then. I want to be a MUA, like a _real_ make-up artist, not an Instagram beauty guru, and I want to make temporary art and have everyone really appreciate the amount of skill it takes to work with make-up. It’s an expensive art form, y’know, and it’s one that is always promoted so everyone can be good at it, so I’m going to need to up my game so much to the very best.”

“Like no one ever was?”

Chris hits Phichit with a pillow, but he rolls over to avoid it, laughing the whole time. He almost rolls off the bed completely, but Chris grabs him by the back of his shirt and pulls him back. Phichit sits up then, and with his hands falling in his lap and he leans forward with bright eyes and a giant smile.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if we end up working together like, you’d be the most famous make-up artist of our time and get called to all kinds of sets and stuff-”

“And you’d be the photographer, best of the best that this city as ever seen,” Chris finishes his thought with a laugh.

“Oh my god, Chris let’s work together. We’ll start up our own company and we’ll kick so much ass, we gotta do it!”

Chris lets out a loud laugh and scoots a little closer. It’s been so long since he’s hears someone encourage his career choice that wasn’t either his parents or Victor.

“We should!” he says. “What should we call it?”

 

* * *

 

Victor ends up pushing both his and Yuuri's shoes away further from the edge of the pool to keep them safer. There’s not that big of a chance of backsplash but he still doesn’t want to run the risk of getting his socks soaked and deal with that the rest of his night.

He didn’t really expect to his night to involve him rolling up his jeans to dip his feet in the pool, but then again, nothing that’s happened in the past hour or so was something he expected and if anything, it just brings a smile to his face. Sure, following a swaying Yuuri to the poolside to make sure he didn’t fall in and then having to catch him before he shoved his feet into the water after sitting down was a bit of a chore, especially considering that he had to convince him that it was a good idea to take his shoes and socks off before sticking his feet in the water. Still, it’s nice, this moment.

It’s different.

He’s enjoying it.

Yuuri is still close to him, still leaning against him, even if his focus is more on the way his feet cuts through the water than whatever it is Victor is up to.

Victor nudges him away for a split second, throws an arm over Yuuri’s shoulder and tucks him back in against his chest. He asks, “Are you okay?”

Yuuri makes a small noise and he can feel him nod his head.

“I’m okay,” he says. “This is nice. I like this.”

“Too bad it’s not all that quiet,” Victor says just as another loud burst of music comes right out from the officially dubbed 80’s house before it’s turned back down and more screaming is heard.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Yuuri. “There’s not a lot of people anymore, so it’s still nice.”

That’s... not exactly true. A quick look around says that there are a few groups of three or four hanging around the pool area, the beer pong table is not that far away, and there are still people traveling back and forth between the two houses. But, they aren’t being bothered, so in a way, they kind of are alone.

“I don’t like a lot of people,” Yuuri goes on to say. “I mean, I don’t really like being in the middle of so many people, not really.”

“That can’t be good. Not with all the parties that are usually always happening.”

“I don’t go to parties.”

“What?”

Yuuri pushes himself away, just a little bit, just enough to look Victor in the eye with his face hovering so close that it makes that weird chest feeling come back.

“I don’t go to parties,” he says, softly, like some form of confession meant for Victor’s ears only. “This is my first one. I guess. I’ve been to like, slumber parties, but with only Leo and Phichit though, we’re like the three musketeers... we’re like the three musketeers!”

He starts to laugh, a little out of control and realizes it so he ends up pressing himself back against Victor’s chest to muffle himself. Victor lets him, unable to do much as he tries to figure out just who he’s been taking care of because with the way Yuuri’s been handling his booze and dance moves, he was sure that he was helping out someone who was much more extroverted.

“Well,” he says, after a moment. “I guess this is why this is the first time I’ve ever seen you.”

Yuuri says something, but Victor doesn’t understand him with his face buried like that. He moves back, puts his hand underneath Yuuri’s chin to lift his face back up and asks him to repeat whatever it is he just said.

“Does that mean you go to a lot of parties?” Yuuri asks him, and there’s something unreadable in his eyes. “Am I not letting you have fun?”

“No! No, I mean, being with you is fun!”

“Don’t lie, no it’s not.”

“Yes, it is, I wanna be with you more than anyone else right now.”

Now, Yuuri just looks confused. “Why?”

Why?

Because…

Because…

“Because,” he says, and looks up towards the sky, like he’s going to find what he’s been feeling to be spelt out in those non-existent stars. “I guess, because I’m just kind of tired of all this. I come to these things, mostly because someone else always wants me to. And because, it’s just what you’re supposed to do, right? Go out, sneak some drinks, dance, party, come home late. Play those make-out games, and flirt around. Be cool and aloof, so everyone will like you. That’s what normal kids do, isn’t it? And it’s like, isn’t that what I should want to do? Just be a normal kid?”

By the time he looks back to Yuuri, Yuuri is frowning at him, squinting his eyes and looking him over like he’s searching for something. He doesn’t get the chance to ask him about it, because Yuuri has both his hands cupping either side of his face and he’s saying, “You’re not normal.”

He doesn’t expect that feeling in his chest to suddenly feel like he’s been speared through.

“You’re not,” Yuuri keeps saying. “You’re better than normal, you’re Victor.”

Now, it’s his turn to be confused. “What?”

“Yeah,” he smiles, and Victor is noticing right now, that Yuuri is more beautiful than he realized. “You’re Victor. You dance with strangers and make them feel good and help them find their friends and help them keep their shoes dry. You take care of me because you’re so nice and you’re better than normal, because you’re you!”

He loops his arms around Victor’s neck, nearly crawls into his lap, and he’s beginning to notice that Yuuri really likes putting their faces close together, he can feel his heart beat go faster with this realization, why?

“You should always do what you want to do,” he tells him. “And people will like you anyway, because I know that you’re on the best people in the world. Just because you’re you. Okay?”

Victor… can’t say anything. His head is swimming, and his feet are getting too cold, and his heart is pounding away, and there’s a lump in his throat that he can’t swallow down.

He starts to blink rapidly, and for a moment thinks that he might start to tear up – which is stupid because there’s no reason for him to do that – when Yuuri cups his face again and brings him back out of his thoughts.

“Hey,” he says, and nothing else.

Victor stares at him, stares into those dark brown eyes that are still glazed over and can’t help but wonder how much of what he’s said to him is true. How drunk is Yuuri? How much of any of this does he mean? Would he still mean any of this if he was sober? He wants him to, he really does…

Yuuri tilts his head, frowning, but says nothing.

Another [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59MvpXQqrs) blasts out from the nearby house and there’s more shouting about how the shitty 80’s shtick needs to end already.

“I’m gay!” a girl’s voice shrieks out over the noise. “Let me live!”

Neither one pays attention to that, and Victor doesn’t even have the chance the brace himself when Yuuri suddenly grabs his shirt and pulls him backwards with him right into the water.

The cold water is a shock, and it’s not like Victor had even been drinking, but it definitely wakes him up. His eyes are shut and his lungs are burning a little from the lack of air he was able to inhale before suddenly being submerged, but he’s so much more aware somehow. He can still feel Yuuri holding on to him, until suddenly he isn’t, and in a panic Victor’s eyes are wide open, searching for him under the water.

Yuuri is floating right in front of him, his hair swirling around in a shapeless inky blob and his glasses suspended just above his eyes and they’re staring right back at him and he smiles. Victor doesn’t hesitate to smile back, he can’t help it. This boy… He doesn’t completely understand this boy, but it doesn’t put him off. It only makes him follow him back up to the surface when he starts to kick upwards, makes him grab on to his shoulders once they break through the water and the air comes crashing back into his lungs.

“What was that for?” he gasps. His hair is plastered down to his head, fringe sticking to face and clothes settling uncomfortably against his skin.

For the first time tonight, Victor is the one clinging on to Yuuri as he tries to figure out what just happened, and then suddenly, Yuuri is holding him in the water and laughing.

“You were starting to look sad,” he says, and then shrugs. “I missed seeing you smile, so… surprise?”

Victor doesn’t know if this is just Yuuri-logic or just a product of his drunk-state, but even though being completely clothed in a pool is starting to make everything feel heavier, he finds that he doesn’t mind any of it at all.

He thinks, that maybe it’s just having Yuuri here that nothing feels all that heavy, after all.

“You’re smiling again!”

Victor laughs, and then splashes the other boy. He still dragged him in the pool after all, he needs some kind of revenge. If that includes the two of them making an even bigger mess by tossing all this water around, well, it’s a party, messes are going to happen.

 

* * *

 

Leo probably should have kept better track of how much time he had spent just giving a music lecture. He always does this, he knows it’s kind of a problem since it got his cousin to throw that lawn chair at him when he ended up on the roof of his Tio’s garage going on about how they’re allowed to play more than the same four songs at every party.

Gabby says he’ll be aware, but he’ll never learn.

She’s probably right.

It would also help to keep track of his friends. He text Phichit who had sent him a text about being upstairs in one of the houses with a boy and he’s going to definitely ask for details about that later, but he figures for now he can leave him alone and try to find Yuuri. He isn’t answering his phone and he doesn’t know if that’ a good or a bad thing.

Phichit’s on his own after all, so where was Yuuri in all this? Leo knows he’s not much of a social person, so he can’t imagine him making new friends or anything like that. He hopes he’s okay.

It takes about maybe two minutes for him to learn that Yuuri is doing just fine.

He had gone through the second house, looking around, didn’t see him anywhere and didn’t see anyone he knew so he left through the back and was crossing by the near abandoned beer pong table on his way to the last house when he finds him.

He doesn’t think it’s Yuuri at first, because never in a million years would he ever think that Yuuri would be capable of talking to anyone he didn’t already know, but because he’s being helped out of the pool for some reason by a guy that definitely looks like someone Yuuri would never approach.

He’s tall, super-blond, and with a face that even Gabby might even admire from afar even if he’s not really her type.

And he’s also really holding on to Yuuri.

Really, really holding on to Yuuri.

It’s like a bad cliché straight out of the movies, with Leo only so many feet away from them, watching Yuuri being pulled into this other boy’s arms while soaking wet and laughing with him. They don’t even look like they notice anyone else, they’re so engrossed with each other.

Leo stays right up to the moment where the other boy cups Yuuri’s face and Yuuri doesn’t pull away. If anything, he moves closer to the other, wrapping his arms around the other’s waist and is smiling so bright.

(He’s doesn’t think he’s ever seen him smile like that before.)

(It’s different. He can’t explain it. Just seeing it from here, he just knows.)

(This is different.)

The other boy leans forward and dips his head close to Yuuri’s own, tilts his face downwards and that’s the turning point, really.  It’s obvious to him where this is going, and he doesn’t need to be here for it. He turns on his heel, goes right back down the same path that he came from.

He doesn’t need, and frankly doesn’t _want_ to see any more than that.

(He doesn’t get to see Victor press his cheek against Yuuri’s and hug him tight, doesn’t get to see the way Yuuri laughs and press his hands against Victor’s chest to keep some distance between them so their wet clothes don’t cling together.)

Leo doesn’t exactly know where he’s going, just that he’s got to get out of here, even if that means doing nothing but wait by the car until Gabby is ready to go.

He just, he just can’t be here.

And it’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, he has no reason to feel this shaken up over seeing what he just saw. There’s no reason for the twist in his stomach, or the nausea threatening to come up from the base of his throat. It’s stupid. So stupid. He’s stupid. So, so stupid.

It’s not like he’s ever done anything about this ridiculous not-crush of his, and it’s irrational to even be not-jealous and run away from something that he probably wasn’t meant to see anyway.

Still… he never thought Yuuri would be the kind of person to hook up with at a party, and with a stranger at that.

And if he did have an interest in boys, then did he ever look at Leo like that and he just didn’t notice? Was there a missed opportunity that he didn’t take? Is it too late? Or is it cos he’s not Yuuri’s type? But does Yuuri even have a type? Did he just discover his type?

None of these questions have any answers, that he knows of so far, and none of it helps him not want to just sit by the car and wait for his sister to show up, so what does it even matter?

Maybe it’s his fault for leaving Phichit and Yuuri to go off and pull the same dumb shit he does at every party, he clearly missed something important, and now all he gets to do is regret it.

He gets halfway to the car when he hears his name being called out.

“Leo!”

He turns to see Gabby, leaned up against a different car, with a group of her friends and looking at him with squinted eyes and a drink in her hand.

“What’s wrong?” she calls out to him again.

He doesn’t answer her. He just turns right back around and walks even faster away.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.”

Gabby gives her friend a long sideways glance before pushing herself away from the car and passing her drink to a different girl on the other side of her.

“Maribel, watch my drink,” she says. “I’ma see what’s goin’ on with this boy.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply or anything like that, she trusts her friend enough, and just like that she’s chasing after her brother. She’s calling his name, but he’s still ignoring her. She doesn’t even catch up to him, really, he does stop once he’s at her car because there is nowhere else for him to go.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, straight out, not beating around the bush or anything.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Bullshit, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Leo-”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, annoyed and clearly upset. “I just wanna be alone right now, go back with your friends.”

“I’m not doing that until I know what’s wrong,” she tells him.

“Why?”

“Because… Because I’m your sister and I love you and I worry about you.”

The throw back to what he’s said earlier shuts him up. He looks up at first, then at Gabby, then at the floor. He’s clearly trying to put his words together, and Gabby waits for him to say what he wants. There’s no sense in rushing him, she needs to be patient.

“I saw Yuuri making out with a boy,” he says and looks off to the side like he’s just made a passing comment about the weather or something.

“Oh, shit, get it, Yuuri,” she laughs. She stops as soon as she realizes that this is what’s made Leo upset. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

She’s kind of at a loss of what to say in the moment, but Leo does his best to seem like it’s not a big deal to him at all.

“It’s whatever, I don’t care,” he says. “It’s not like I like him or anything, not like that, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah, totally. It’s totally normal to just get upset and leave a party because one of your friends hooked up with someone else when you don’t _like_ them _like that._ ”

The glare he gives her doesn’t do anything to change her mind. She only rolls her eyes and forces Leo into a hug, pressing him right up against her and wrapping her arms around and putting her chin on top of his head to keep him there. No amount of flailing is going to get Leo out of this, no matter how hard he tries.

And he’s really trying.

“Let me love you,” she says. “Look, you probably feel all weird and confused and stuff and that’s fine, you’re not the first person in the world to get a crush on a friend.”

Leo’s flails die down, but he still doesn’t do much more than allow himself to be held with his arms hanging heavy at his side. He mutters something that she isn’t able to hear and lets him go a little.

“What?”

“I said,” he says and pushes away just a little more, “there’s no reason for me to run away like that, though. It’s embarrassing.”

“Sure there was a reason. Your feelings are being stupid and that’s reason enough.”

Leo remains unconvinced, Gabby can see even that much. And it’s understandable, she remembers being that age a whole three years ago and from all the drama of both girls and boys crying for the drama of it all, but still… Leo is her brother, and he’s hurting, even if he’s denying it, and it’s her duty to comfort him.

“Come here,” she says and slings an arm over his shoulder. “I’m gonna get Maribel to mix you something and you’re gonna drink it and you’re gonna talk shit about this boy Yuuri hooked up with and she’s gonna talk shit about the girl Kristina hooked up with, and then Yosef is gonna talk shit about his love life, and we’re all gonna sing _Como La Flor_ for like an hour.”

“Why?”

“Cos that’s what you do when you get your heartbroken. You drink, talk shit, and then listen to _Como La Flor_ for like a few weeks straight.”

“…Like you did when that guy from Venice ghosted you?”

Gabby pulls a face, and then starts to walk Leo back to her friends. “I told you to never mention him again, but yes.”

That gets Leo to laugh a little, which seeing as how that’s completely based on past pain, is a little terrible, but Gabby is just happy to see him smile, even a little.

Yuuri missed out, she can’t help but think. There’s no one better than her baby brother.

 

* * *

 

Victor keeps shaking his phone even though nothing is going to change. The screen still won’t change and he’s even tried the hard reset. He probably should have just left it alone to begin with…

“I’m sorry….”

Yuuri is still sniffling a little next to him. He hadn’t been crying, not really, although he did come close to it when Victor realized that his phone had still been in his jeans and freaked out a little about that. There were definite tears in his eyes, and that’s just something Victor is not prepared to deal with in the slightest, nope, no way. Instead, he swallowed his panic and pretended that everything would be fine.

Which it will be.

Hopefully.

(He doesn’t think his mom will be too mad about it, he’ll just say that he dropped it while filming Chris for his channel or something, that’s believable.)

“It’s okay,” he tells him and pulls the blanket around them tighter. “It’ll be okay, don’t worry about it.”

Yuuri just leans in closer and mutters, “I can’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t. I can’t just not worry about it. I’m sorry.”

He sounds like he’s about to start crying again and Victor rushes in to hush him.

“It was an accident. Just an accident. It’ll be fixed, and it’ll be okay. Please, don’t cry.”

“Nice comforting skills,” a random boy passing by tells him.

Victor fixes him a glare. “No one asked you!”

There’s not that many people around, but they’re lying out on the grass somewhat close to the small bonfire pit behind the 80’s house and there’s still kids hanging around drinking and throwing things into the fire.

Always a good combination.

But, it was the only place that had anything like towels for them to dry off, and if using this single blanket that’s a little too small for two of them is their only option, then Victor isn’t going to fight against fate.

Yuuri sniffles again and Victor wraps an arm around his waist and brings him in closer.

“C’mon, no crying,” Victor tells him. “You wanted me to smile, so now I want you to smile. What happened to that laughing boy who was having so much fun and exciting?”

“He’s not real,” says Yuuri, and he just clings onto him. “He’s not…”

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri tilts his head up, his brown eyes looking sad for the first time in all the time that Victor’s known him and it just about breaks his heart, and says, “I’m not.. I’m not like that. It’s never like that.”

He snuggles back into Victor’s chest and goes on to say, “I always worry about everything and I always think too much to do anything fun and I wish I could stop thinking so much so that I could have fun and not always think about all the ways I embarrass myself and my friends and I hate that I’m this way-”

“Hey, hey, Yuuri…”

Victor brushes Yuuri’s hair back and makes him look at him again. He looks so sad and Victor is so lost as to what to do. Looking after a drunk boy ready to grind on anyone or anything is one thing, looking after a sobering boy who looks ready to cry at a drop of a hat is something he is entirely unprepared for.

He needs to divert from this. He’s good at that. He can totally change subjects.

 “Hey,” he starts off again, and he makes sure Yuuri is listening. “Can I tell you something?”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything, but he does nod.

“I had a lot of fun tonight, and I wasn’t before I started dancing with you.”

Yuuri’s eyes widen, like he can’t believe that Victor would say such a thing, and he even looks away for a moment before turning back to him with a little furrow between his brow and a small frown.

God, he wished he knew what he was thinking…

“You really a lot of fun dancing with me?” he asks.

“Yes! And with everything else too! I was actually having a pretty bad time, but then I met you, and then it started being fun. So… So, I guess I wanna say, thank you for being at this party and having fun with me.”

For whatever reason, that seems to work. Yuuri doesn’t look as sad as he was just moments ago, and his features smooth out and he’s giving Victor a small little smile, and it’s a sight that makes him wish his phone was working just so that he could have a picture of this moment right now because of how _soft_ Yuuri looks. He wants a memento he can keep and look at it, for once he would actually like something and his phone is broken. What perfect luck.

(Probably for the best though, a thought says from the back of his head. Probably not good to have that on his phone. Just in case.)

“I had fun too,” he says, snapping Victor out of any thought that could dampen his mood. “I didn’t think I would, but you made it fun too.”

His arms wrap around Victor’s waist, he’s pressed even closer and it’s almost a little unpleasant with the way their damp clothes almost being to fuse together, but then Yuuri is snuggling close and using his chest as a pillow and none of that matters anymore.

“I had fun,” he repeats softly, and Victor starts to pet his hair.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I’m glad you had fun tonight.”

Yuuri hums, and then, to Victor’s surprise he says, “Thank you.”

“For what?” he chuckles. “I didn’t really do much.”

“Yes, you did,” says Yuuri. “You took care of me, and danced with me, and you made all the noise in my head go away and stay away. That’s the important part, and I wish it could always be like that.”

He doesn’t know why really, but hearing Yuuri say that just makes him want to hold on to him tighter, and he does. He holds him close, close enough that he can feel Yuuri’s glasses dig into him uncomfortably, but he doesn’t let go.

“One day,” he hears Yuuri say, but so much softer, “I wanna be the one to take care of you, too. Like you took care of me, I wanna do that for you. You deserve that, you’re so nice, and you deserve that.”

His eyes are burning. There’s no reason for his eyes to be burning, but they are, and he squeezes them shut hard enough that he needs to blink away the tears that gathered and uses the blanket around them to wipe his face roughly.

“You’re too sweet, Yuuri,” he says, but Yuuri doesn’t reply.

Victor shuffles a little bit, just enough to see that Yuuri has nodded off and he doesn’t bother to hold back the little amused laugh that bubbles out of him. He rearranges them, makes sure Yuuri is in a comfortable position and goes back to holding him.

He doesn’t know what they look like to other people, and for once he can’t bring himself to actively care. Right now, he has a gorgeous boy in his arms, one who is just about the sweetest person he’s ever met, and has actually said that he wanted to take care of Victor, and that’s all that matters.

It’s only natural, that with Yuuri snoring softly next to him, tucked into him, that he starts to feel the party exhaustion seep in. The crowd has died down, the music has been turned down, the hour is late, and Victor feels his eyes start to droop. He keeps a tight hold on Yuuri, there’s no doubt that he’ll ever let go. Though, when his eyes close, they stay close, and he starts to nod off.

In a way, still damp and wrapped in a stranger’s blanket, on a stranger’s lawn, is one of the most comfortable places he’s ever fallen asleep. And he can’t help but think that he really wishes this night wouldn’t end.

 

* * *

 

Gabby is not happy.

Gabby is very much not happy.

Phichit, for the first time in ever, is cowering a little bit. He’s never really seen her like this – standing at full height, arms crossed, eyes ablaze – and it’s a little intimidating, he’s not even going to try to deny that.

“It’s not like any of us can call him, he left his phone at home,” he tells her. “And Chris has been trying to call his friend’s, but he’s not getting anything either. The only thing we know is that they’re together.”

Chris, standing behind Phichit and away from the righteous fury of this girl in front of them, keeps trying Victor’s cell and is actively praying for the other to pick up. He swears very loudly when it goes straight to voicemail again.

“I swear to God,” says Gabby, “if this boy isn’t found in the next ten minutes, the both of you are going to regret this so much.”

“I didn’t even do anything!” Chris cries out. “I’m trying to find out where my friend is too, y’know!”

“Oh, my god, what if something happened to both of them?” Phichit blanches and his eyes go wide.

“You better hope for your sake, Phichit Chulanont, that nothing happened to Yuuri,” Gabby tells him and pokes him straight in the dead center of his chest. “I was left in charge of all three of you, and like hell am I gonna let any of you die on my watch!”

Phichit’s sass will always outweigh his common sense in times when it’s just terrible.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have given us free reign?” he says and it’s a very wrong thing to say.

Gabby literally stomps at them. “Find him!”

Both Phichit and Chris run off after that.

Gabby holds back the urge to yell even more after them, and instead turns on her heel and is facing Leo again.

“Come with me, I’ma bring the car over closer so we can just toss his ass in an’ take off,” she says. “We are way late for curfew.”

She takes off back to where her car is parked with Leo trailing after her, wordlessly. They’re not even halfway there when Leo decides to finally speak up.

“They were by the pool,” he says. “The last time I saw them.”

Gabby doesn’t reply, not right away. Eventually, she says, “Call Phichit, or text him, whatever, let him know.”

She can hear Leo fumble around with his phone and doesn’t say more than that. God, these kids are gonna kill her, why did she even bring them?

 

* * *

 

There’s rustling.

There’s no music playing anymore, so Victor can hear the footsteps, but he’s just so comfortable that he doesn’t even want to open his eyes.

“C’mon, you gotta get up, it’s time to go.”

He doesn’t wanna go though. He’s comfy, and he’s warm.

“Yuuri, c’mon let’s go.”

“Why are they both wet?”

“Well, Leo did say that they were by the pool.”

“That just leaves me with more questions.”

“Whatever, help me pick Yuuri up before Gabby kills me.”

Suddenly, it’s not warm anymore. All the warm is taken away in one move and there’s only a gust of cold air that clings to Victor’s still wet clothes and he tries to roll over to get that warm back but there’s nothing there.

“Phichit?”

“Shh, it’s me. We gotta go Yuuri, Gabby is waiting for us.”

“But what about Victor?”

“I’ll take care of him, he’ll be okay.”

“… Cow-eyes.”

Someone’s laughing. Someone’s laughing, and they’re loud, and now it’s cold, and Victor is annoyed.

“Cow-eyes.”

“Phichit, no.”

“Phichit, yes.”

There’s more shuffling, and people are still talking, but he doesn’t completely understand what’s being said anymore. There are more footsteps, and then Victor feels someone brushing his hair back away from his face.

“The hell did you get yourself in to?”

His eyes start to open, an ugly frown turning his lips downwards and he put nothing but a whole lot of heat goes in to the glare he shoots at the first person he see. It doesn’t bother Chris, he’s all smiles the more Victor’s eyes come into focus.

“Where am I?” he asks, and Chris laughs.

“C’mon, let’s go home,” he says. “The party’s dying down and I guess we gotta get you some dry clothes? Although, I guess you’re not that wet. You look like someone was trying to drown you though, the hell did you get yourself in to?”

The hand on his chest rubbing him up and down startles him more awake, and Victor smacks it away without even really thinking about it. Chris says something, but he doesn’t catch it, he’s too busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with this picture here because something is missing…

Oh.

Oh, that’s right he closed his eyes and he must’ve fallen asleep…

It’s not like he doesn’t know that the space next to him is empty, but that doesn’t stop him from running over the spot where Yuuri was lying next to him (in his arms, on him, semantics) like he’d magically come back from out of thin air. When that doesn’t work (who knew?) he looks back at Chris and is suddenly very awake.

“Where’s Yuuri?”

“Oh, Phichit took him home already.”

He’s really awake.

“When? How long ago? Chris?!”

“They just walked off that way like, five minutes ago, what’s wrong?”

“I didn’t get his number!”

It’s all Victor’s able to say before leaving his friend behind and stumbling off in the vague direction Chris pointed at to chase them both down. There’s fewer people around so it makes it easy to get through the side gate that leads to the street, and from there he’s able to see a few cars already revving to go home and Yuuri being shuffled into one of them, still looking very asleep and being tucked into the backseat with another boy letting himself be used as a pillow.

Victor has never run so fast.

The back door is slammed shut before he even makes it to the car side, but there’s a girl that’s walking over to the car after apparently saying goodbye to the people in one that takes off soon after. Victor calls after her. He doesn’t know her name, so he’s just screaming out

“Hi!” he says breathlessly and throws her his oh-so-charming smile. “My name is Victor.”

The girls looks him up and down real quick before saying nothing more than, “Kay.”

She’s not instantly impressed with him, but that’s fine he just needs to pass on a message, she could do that much, right?

“I didn’t get Yuuri’s number earlier,” he tells her. “Could you give him mine? My phone isn’t working right now, but I’ll get it fixed soon, so can you tell him to text me? I would really like to see him again?”

She keeps looking at him, and there’s something unreadable in the way her eyes stare him down that makes him think that she isn’t going to do that.

“Please?” he begs. “I really do mean it, we fell in the pool and my phone got water logged so it’s not working, but I do want to talk to him again. Will you please give him my number?”

He’s about ready to get down on his knees and beg for this to happen, maybe even do the unthinkable and storm the car to shake Yuuri awake and get something from him, anything to contact him afterwards, but he doesn’t have to do that.

She whips her phone out from her jacket and says, “Hurry up, we gotta go.”

It’s all Victor needs. He spits his number out faster than ever, watches her put it in all while telling her how much he appreciates it, he really does and how he can’t wait to talk to Yuuri again. Especially sober, he wants to know every side of Yuuri.

Gabby shakes him off after that, doesn’t really say much to him in ways of goodbyes. She only gets into the car as soon as possible and buckles herself in. She watches the kid walk away and doesn’t really know what to think of all of this.

(Mostly she thinks that she really thought she knew Yuuri, she practically watched the kid grow up and never once did she ever think he would ever have the nerve to reel in someone that good-looking. But he was probably drinking, so…)

“What did he want?” Leo asks, breaking her out of her thoughts and tries to lean over to see her phone.

“Don’t be nosy,” she scolds and pulls her phone away.

The illumination of her phone casts her entire face in an eerie kind of glow in the darkness of the car. She keeps staring down at the screen where the incomplete new contact stares right back at her, showing nothing but the number of this kid that caught Yuuri’s eye and vice versa. The longer she stares at it, the more she wants to get rid of it.

Maybe it’s petty, but he inadvertently made Leo upset, so…

“Gabby?”

Her fingers move before she can even change her mind.

“It’s nothing,” she says and deletes the number. “Don’t worry about it.”

She locks her phone again and tosses it on Leo’s lap and starts her car up. She can still kind of feel his eyes on her, but she doesn’t even bother to look his way. She needs to focus on her driving. It’s late, after all.

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“I’m gonna die alone.”

“Oh, my god.”

“This is it.”

“Don’t suffocate yourself on my pillow, that’s my favorite one!”

“’M gonna die alone.”

“Victor…”

“Why hasn’t he text me? I thought we had something…”

“I don’t know, but it’s not like you won’t see him again.”

“…Whaddya mean?”

“He’s going to our school- Whoa! Hi!”

“This is life or death, Chris, explain yourself.”

“You maybe wanna get off me first? His friend, the one I was hanging out with, he told me that they’re both enrolled at St Agatha’s.”

“This is the best moment of my life.”

“You were literally just trying to bury yourself in all my pillows and crying about dying alone.”

“I’m in the best mood ever. Wanna put make-up on me for your channel?”

“…Yes. C’mere I wanna try this rainbow highlight on you.”

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“So, I’m sweating everywhere and its gross right, and my cousin Saegndao is making fun of me because _obviously_ I’ve never tapped into actually being Thai or whatever, right? And I’m sitting there like, um, I was born in California and that’s not my fault?”

“It gets hot here too, though.”

“Yeah, but Bangkok was brutal. Like, usually it doesn’t get too bad with the humidity here, I felt like I was constantly bathing in sweat while we were there.”

“And I thought dealing with Mari aiming the fan at her crotch again was bad.”

“The burrito thing happened again?!”

“No, this time it was a bathtub thing.”

“I’m not sure I even want to know.”

Their conversation ends when the get to the school gates, if only because Yuuri pauses to stop and really look at the building. It’s not the first time he’s been here, he went on the tour with Phichit and had orientation here just a week ago, but it’s still a little daunting.

Beside him, Phichit nudges him into moving again, and Yuuri picks his pace back up. There’s nothing to be worried about, is what he tells himself. It’s a new school, yes, and the uniforms might be new, but Phichit is still by his side and vice versa. Nothing is going to disturb the easy sailing he thinks the next four years will be.

The don’t cross straight through the center lawn like many of the other upperclassman seem to do, instead they follow along the sidewalks with the other apparent freshmen and it takes them a little longer to get to the front steps. Though, when they do, that’s when he hears it.

“Yuuri!”

It’s loud. Loud enough that many people are looking for the source of where this cry came from, and for a split second Yuuri is convinced that there’s someone else with his namesake because even if kids from Our Lady were to also come here, there’s no one who would be so excited to see him enough to shout like that.

But, along with several other people, see the figure of a boy standing on the short pillar right before the stairs, smiling wide, and waving wildly before hopping down and forcing his way through the other school boys and coming straight at him.

The closer he gets, the wider Yuuri’s eyes are.

He’s taller than Yuuri and _~~blonder paler fairer the most beautiful person he’s ever seen?~~_ clearly older, but which class he’s in, well, he doesn’t know that because he’s pretty ~~just like this boy~~ sure he’s never met anyone ~~so beautiful~~ like him before in his life.

He’s pretty sure he’d remember that.

This ~~beautiful~~ boy seems to think differently though because he instantly throws his arms around Yuuri and squeezes him into a hug that makes him freeze up in his arms and stay that frozen even when being let go.

In a way.

The ~~beautiful~~ boy has both his hands on each of Yuuri’s shoulders and either doesn’t notice the wide eye stare he’s being given or is just ignoring it because he’s still smiling even as he says, “I was kind of worried about getting in trouble for climbing the pillar like that, but I wanted to be in a place where I’d be able to pick you out of the crowd!”

“Oh, my god,” Yuuri faintly hears Phichit say next to him, but it doesn’t absolutely nothing to either unfreeze him or get this ~~beautiful~~ boy to stop talking.

“I got here super early so that I’d be able to find you before school!” he keeps saying and the more he speaks the more Yuuri just really wants to run away. “I kept trying to get a hold of you through Yuuko, but she told me that she didn’t have your personal number and you’re barely on facebook or anything else and you weren’t going to see each other until the school year started, so I was kind of upset, but it’s okay because Chris told me we were going to same school together and isn’t that the greatest thing ever?!”

There’s a pause. He’s waiting for a reply. Yuuri needs to reply. He needs to say something - do something, he has to..

“I.. don’t think I know who you are?” he blurts out, and he immediately feels like that was the wrong thing to say.

Beside him, Phichit starts to laugh and the ~~beautiful~~ boy’s face falls so quick that Yuuri really can’t see what’s so funny about it. He feels his cheeks start to burn up and the urge to run is so strong that he would have been long gone on the way back home if Phichit hadn’t just put his hand on his shoulder and ground him down that way.

“Yuuri, this has to be that guy I was telling you about before I left,” he says. “The one you hung out with all night at the party but you didn’t want know anything about that. ‘Cause you were embarrassed that you couldn’t remember. Remember?”

He’s not even going to pretend that what Phichit just said is ironic at best, because now his memory is flashing back to a party at the beginning of the summer and the hazy memory of things he doesn’t remember doing and if the way people have been vagueing him at the studio, he would rather just not know at all.

It took some pleading and a few fake tears to get Yuuko to never mention it again, and Sara was all too happy to not say anything to him about it (if only because she too would rather not remember, but he doesn’t know that), but overall everyone seemed content to let him live on without needing to know what happened.

Except right now, in this moment, there is no way to erase whatever did happen. This is someone who he doesn’t know, someone ~~way out of all social circles just look at him~~ he wouldn’t ever regularly approach looking at him and knows his name, and Yuuri can’t do a thing to make that go away.

“You don’t remember me, Yuuri?” he asks, and oh-man-oh-god-oh-man he looks so sad about that. Yuuri is terrible he’s making the ~~beautiful~~ boy sad.

“Um, I don’t know?” he ends up stuttering out and the mood just drops even more.

“This is absolutely terrible,” Phichit says from behind him, and pulls his phone out to take pictures. “I’m putting this on Snapchat.”

(It takes .5 seconds for the both of them to gang up on Phichit to not do that much and Yuuri is caught off guard again by this ~~beautiful~~ boy coming to Yuuri’s aid that when said ~~beautiful, wonderful~~ boy introduces himself as Victor and asks to get to know him again, well, how could he say anything other than yes?)

(Well, he actually stutters out a meek “Okay.” and promptly runs into the school, not even seeing how happy just that much makes Victor really, but it’s a start.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an actual conversation that happened:  
> friend: you don't think they're oversharing stuff for just meeting at this thing?  
> me: the first night we met you told me about *insert tragic backstory* and we didn't even like each other then.  
> friend: ...you right.
> 
> I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS WAS SO LONG
> 
> I HAD AN OUTLINE
> 
> WHAT HAPPENED??
> 
> i don't have a clue my dudes and pals like... idfk
> 
> to anyone still reading and keeping up with this series, i hope you enjoyed this party fic because the next part is gonna start off cute and then get not cute. very not cute.
> 
> i'm just saying.

**Author's Note:**

> [there's a spotify playlist to go with this fic](https://open.spotify.com/user/123711700/playlist/2wcjEU8U78zkEQ56fWwJhq)  
>     
> (it's honestly something a friend and i made and tried to have some sense of symbolism but at least half of the songs are because of memes and inside jokes we were laughing over while putting it together.)
> 
> (naming the fic after 'Close to Me' was something i chose deliberately though. not just cos the title is almost like their aria but because to me that song always meant something along the lines of: here you are going through your day thinking that it's going to be the same as before and nothing is going to change it never will and everything is hopeless but oh... wait... what's this? this is new... this is good...)
> 
> (that and because it's my favorite song by The Cure so.... //shrug)
> 
> anyway, i was originally going to post this whole part in one go, but while reading through it and going over stuff with mentioned friend we decided that the constant back and forth pov switch was just too much. it started off as a fun idea but not so much when in practice so we decided to leave this first chapter as is and revamp the rest to read in a more linear voice over the span of two chapters: one for yuuri and one for victor respectively (and a few page breaks for other characters that deserve their small bit of screen time).
> 
> so yeah! i want another chapter out soon, but we'll see how much i rewrite tonight and see how tired i am after ren faire tomorrow. -_-)/
> 
> as always you can bug me on [ tumblr ](http://curls-and-cats.tumblr.com)


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